Surface Area

In math, according to Wikipedia, the on-line, encyclopedia:

Surface area is the how much exposed area an object has. It is expressed in square units. If an object has flat faces, its surface area can be calculated by adding together the areas of its faces. Even objects with smooth surfaces, such as spheres, have surface area.

A business has a surface too: that interface between the people "inside" the business and those "outside" the business. The size of a business's surface is roughly equal to the number of connections the business has.

I think of the surface area of a business kind of like the exterior of a balled up porcupine. Each connection of the business can be considered a small sphere tied to the business by spine with a thin membrane drwawn tightly around the balls.

It used to be that businesses tried to limit their surface area, that is have only the president, and selected others communicate with the wider world. Well, the genie is out of the bottle. The horses have left the barn. Web 2.0 has blown everything apart. Businesses have a greater surface area than ever before.

Businesses that embrace this new reality and use it to their benefit will succeed over the long haul. Those that try to try to strike back will not. Of course each of those connections has a surface area, represented by a membrane fitted over their connections, and so forth. It gets pretty complicated and impossible to visualize after a very short while.

what do you think of this? What are your ideas? I'd like to know. Read the articles cited and their references. Post a comment.

Entrepreneurship informs all of my professional activities. Entrepreneurial ideas are the life's blood of my real estate practice and my writing. For entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog and for entrepreneurial writing to www.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot/com.