distributed opportunities

Posted on December 14, 2007
Filed Under Markets |

It’s hard to seize the world by the lapels when it’s wearing a t-shirt. But this is usually the only way opportunity can be seized when it presents itself - crudely, with no handles.

Seth Godin tells the same story, in terms of wanting to grapple with the world using the handles you know. He managed at least to come away with the t-shirt.

Assumptions. I assumed that the world would stay pretty much the same while I leveraged my assets and completed my agenda.

So I ended up with a t-shirt.

That’s what happens in markets that move.
- The Billion-Dollar T-Shirt

You can’t afford to hesitate, but remember the other side, that often you can’t afford to make a move either. When my first partners and I started our web development company in 1996, we used to see opportunities that we simply couldn’t play in, because we didn’t have the entry ticket to the game, just couldn’t catch the wave.

So there’s the other side to that opportunity thing: it’s not opportunity if you can’t at least see it at shoulder level.

Sometimes the wave would take you of course, out of the blue, preparation meeting opportunity in joyous union.

Now I find there’s a different paradigm operating. Now I’m deep in collaboration with people, and we find the wave taking us up without any central point of awareness that it’s happening. Somehow opportunities get made just from the collaborating. And you get to chat with people as it happens.

This seems more comfortable than having to crash an opportunity. This is how the long tail feels - more tailored, less estranged, more personally suitable. Odd that it comes from the company of many.

But is Seth right? Of course he is, everything he says makes sense. I just wanted to add the other piece.

Distributed opportunities, that’s what you could call it.

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