I recently gave a talk at a big corporate conference to hundreds of delegates, without exception middle-managers from large companies. I realised as I spoke to the audience that my words about entrepreneurship were irrelevant to them – even offensive. For I was preaching the gospel of independence, freedom and risk-taking, while they were entombed in the cosy, airless coffin of big business. All of them were life-long employees of huge institutions and, to them, the struggles of running your own business were totally alien.
The more I thought about this disconnect, the more I realised that all too many executives in large public companies actually have more in common with various arms of government than they do with entrepreneurs and start-ups. I used to believe that the great divide was between the public and the private sector: between state and commercial interests. But in truth the real difference is between giant and small organisations, whether they are for profit or not; between huge bureaucracies and owner-run outfits.
After all, most large corporations are international. They are likely to be publicly traded and owned by diffuse shareholders, themselves pools of institutional money managed by hired hands. Like public bodies, they suffer from the agency problem and institutional capture by managers. At least in founder-run firms, you know who the boss is. Moreover, private firms are largely local, serving customers in their immediate communities, unable to take advantage of tax manoeuvres, which the likes of Google exploit so ruthlessly. Private firms generally have loyalty to their home country, whereas multinationals are the commercial equivalent of non-doms – everything has a tendency to migrate to the lowest-cost location.