Age of the Geek

There can be no question this the age of the geek. From Bezos to Musk to Zuckerberg to Page and Brin, tech savvy leaders are front and center in our world. But this isn’t the age of the geek because we have so many geeky leaders it’s the age of the geek because they didn’t need professional managers or masters of business administration to create their massively successful businesses. The success of tech entrepreneurs is proof that product and design sell better, connect to customers, better than structured decision making and “efficiency gains” through labor arbitrage.

Why now? The rationale I have outlined is not a novel one so why is now the age of the geek and not 30 years ago, 15 years ago or even 5 years ago? Today the access to cutting edge technology and means to distribute ideas has been democratized past the tipping point that if you have an idea, technical skills but don’t have the capital you can still produce and compete with well established players.

The next logical conclusion might be that the masters of business are bound to marshal the resources to employ talented tech savvy staff to compete and with superior business management skills they should overtake the likes of Alphabet, Facebook, Uber and the like. There again you would be wrong. The masters of business crave certainty, well known payback periods, returns in excess of hurdle rates.

For the professional manager failure is becoming more common and acceptable but only if you fail following the crowd. If a professional manager delivers a product similar to others or in line with prevailing forecast for product direction there little personal risk. A professional manager trying to introduce a new business model, sharing economy or gig economy, a failure would mean the end of their career. For this reason now is the age of the geek, free from professional managers fear and doubt of business models and looking simply to create superior products and services that meet market needs.

It’ like the old saying goes, “Professionals built the Titanic, an amateur built the Ark. Don’t be afraid to try something new.”

With an idea and an Internet connection today you can change the world.