So Much “Hacking” Left To Do!

In his insightful and thought-provoking book, SmartCuts, Shane Snow sets forth the proposition that the common theme linking many successful ventures was the pursuit of an alternative, non-traditional path –“hacking” the more obvious means and methods — by-passing the usual ladders and pre-requisites, and avoiding the gatekeepers and obstacles encountered along the way.

A few of the common denominators of these success stories were the ability to see things in a different, non-traditional way, a willingness to think big, and access to specialized tools needed to get the job done.

The stories were inspirational, but something was nagging at me. The author said it was the traditional ladder of success that was hacked, but what exactly did that mean?

Smart, capable, visionary people with courage have always been around. But they have often been limited in what they can accomplish on their own because they lacked control of the resources they needed to really put their smarts to use building what they believed people would buy.

The ownership of the enormous amount of capital needed to develop and build and scale products — equipment and technology, such as it was — was firmly in the hands of the latest generation of elites with money and connections who could sell and schmooze and parlay their way into “management.” These new “elites” ended up getting the keys to the castle handed to them by previous generations who were already firmly entrenched in places of power. If a worker wanted to make a living, he ended up working for the elites, doing the kinds of things the elite leadership thought and believed were important and valuable.

And elites were even proud to say “I make it a habit to hire people smarter than I am” so the workers could be assured they’d have comfortable jobs working for the elites.

But because of the kinds and amounts of resources needed — the fields, the factories, the labs — from which all the power was derived — they could never have resources like this of their own, and be free to pursue their own ideas of what might be valued in the marketplace.

Then came the double-jump shift: First, the Industrial Age gave way to the Information Age, which changed the kinds of resources people needed to make products the market would value and buy. Second, the Digital Revolution put the tools to create those products — powerful, cheap computers –in the hands of the many.

Now anyone who had a laptop had all the resources needed to build important things on their own, without having to play “Mother-May-I” with the elite leadership.

So, what’s really new about the kind of hacking that’s going on now is the thing that’s being hacked: The traditional elite network.

And there’s lots more hacking to be done. Maybe the success of these workers can show the way for others who still feel disadvantaged.  Maybe the ladder they’re trying to climb is up against a building in which nothing much of real future value is going on, and they too already have everything they need to build something people will love and pay for.

The new “castles” — the companies and industries where good things are happening right now — are being built by people with intelligence, vision and courage, just as they have always been.

Only now, the people doing the creating and the building get to own the “castles.”

Thanks to the digital revolution, there are lots of new products people are willing to pay for. And, using smarts, an ability to think big and act differently and a willingness to grab onto a computer and other new tools available to virtually anyone, the new generation of entrepreneurs has set a new course others can follow.

Let the hacking continue!