GGI isn’t a real company. It is not listed on the NASDAQ, nor is it privately held. It has no mailing address, website or physical location. It is size-less, shape-less, transparent and ethereal. It has no discernable footprint, no targeted market, no focus. There is no org chart, human resources department interoffice memos or emails and no water cooler or break room. There is no ladder to climb, no glass ceiling, no boardroom, no headquarters. There is not a logo to be found, no slogan or brand identity. There is no unified message, no marketing department to craft press releases, broker deals with magazine editors or work on product placement, celebrity endorsements or do damage control when the vengeful media comes knocking with inquisitions. When asked any employee of GGI wouldn’t have the faintest idea what GGI is or does. GGI’s employees come and go as they please, demand no pay, endure little or no recognition for their individual efforts and yet find great satisfaction in their work.
Great numbers of individuals labor wholly for GGI, and some work only part time. Many stay up late at night, after working another full time job, and tending to their lives to work for GGI. Many large and small companies work directly for GGi and many collaborate with GGI on an increasing number of large and important projects and products.

Why haven’t you ever heard of GGI? Did you miss the cluetrain?

You haven’t heard of GGI of course because it simply doesn’t exist- as a corporation, as we have come to know them. Greater Good Incorporated was formed shortly after the beginning of time, as has persisted is various strengths since then. The people working for GGI have done great things, individually and collectively, and the world is much better off for it. But the sun is still rising for GGI, considering its age, a remarkable feat. The next few decades will be bright for GGI, brighter than the tens thousands of years past. combined.

Projects are almost always small, and more often tiny. Started by anyone, they usually can effect change in only very small ways usually for only a small group of people, usually a group of one. This is the way it was for a very long time. Many people may have done the same exact project, for themselves all around the world, but where unaware of any others. Others may have needed the solution but had no way of finding the people that had it. For this very long time GGI suffered under this terrible problem of connecting its workers to each other.

Markets.

Markets can be found in everything, and that’s a good thing, for doing things the old way. Markets have been marketable, and marketable to. There is marketing, focus groups, user studies, positioning. What if the market is a market of one? The old model is they get ignored, nothing gets made for one person or one situation. We call it mass marketing, one thing for many people. But if that market of one is you, it is possible that you yourself are the best person to make things for just you. But you probably don’t know how to make/do all the things you need. Fortunately the connections afforded by the internet allow one to find the solutions to their problems or desire already solved by someone else. The most interesting thing about this is theat these peopled can share their technique and solutions with millions of people. And one does not need to write a book or produce an instructional video to show someone how to do something, all it takes is a blog post or a mail to an archived mailing list. This shared work, work done for GGI, has led to the spread and subsequent adoption of tools and services that help and facilitate shared work and the spread of this work to a wide audience. All these little bits of advice, technique and methods of solving little problems are attached together to create a new wave of DIY (do it yourself) that is creating an emerging, many to many market where producers and suppliers are on equal ground. People are losing their faith in companies. And companies are losing faith in themselves by attempting to lock in customers, reduce choice and invent need rather than concentrate on making customers like them. When customers feel like they are being conned they pick up and move to another provider, vendor whatever. Once they have done that too many times, they say “Hey can’t I do this for myself?” And increasingly the answer is yes.

Through shared experience, open APIs, new tools and forums for discussion primarily on the Internet, do it yourself culture, mass customization, the rise of amateur made goods will make Greater Good Inc. the most powerful company in the history of the world.

Written by admin (contact).

It was written on October 27th, 2005 at 1:50 pm
Filed in the Category orphan