Future Here Now: Gorilla Economies

Flashback

Hey there. I spent most of last week at a very intense conference focused on finding alternative ways to fund real estate and small business development in disadvantaged communities. I’ll be sharing insights (mine and others) over the next few weeks.

But first…. for this week, I'll share a few pieces that you might or might not have seen before - but if you have, it’s probably been a while. I often find that I see new dimensions or insights in old stuff that I didn’t see when I wrote it, and that’s particularly true of this one.

I often write about how one of the mega-changes facing all of us is the shift from a small number of Titans of Industry to very fragmented economies and communities.

The kinds of top-down organizational tactics we got used to during the Industrial Era (think Rockefeller types in dimly lit smoky room dividing up the iron industry) don’t work anymore, especially on the local level. A hundred or 75 years ago, how our communities grew and developed was largely driven by a small group of Big Local Business Leaders, with a few spouses and political operators thrown in. Today, as I wrote more than 10 years ago, we’ve got a whole new dynamic.