“Platform” is a term we're hearing a lot lately in business circles. Everything, from soap brands to social networks, are now platforms. (Last year, the popular word was “algorithm” for those playing at home. Next year, I predict it will be “exhaustion.”)
The concept owes its recent popularity to tech outfits like Apple, Microsoft, Sony, Twitter and Facebook, who have opened up their own platforms to become, uh, platforms on which talented developers build cool applications and ultimately profitable businesses. It’s nothing to chuckle at: The Facebook application that let users digitally “throw a sheep” at a friend, reportedly raked in about a million dollars in their first year. Not such a bad thing, really. And no sheep were harmed.
But long before we were friending and tweeting and iPhoning, business had the potential to be a platform of a different sort, places where conscientious and creative people could trade their synapse energy and sweat for something that no amount of money can actually buy. It still does. Meaningful work, when matched with leadership that is committed to the development of others, becomes its own scaling mechanism, one that grows a business as surely as mergers, acquisitions and accounting tricks.
When people get to become better versions of themselves, by virtue of the work they do, the world changes for the better. It is the ultimate expression of love in business, work as a transformational activity. This year, manage to that.
When she's not chasing future Presidents or leaping social networks in a single bound, Ellen McGirt occasionally shows up at her job at Fast Company Magazine. As a senior writer she covers a range of business topics, but never stops looking for the writer’s holy grail: The business ideas - and people - who are changing the world. In three years she's written nine cover stories, including studies of Facebook, Cisco, Intel, the Obama brand and Ashton Kutcher. She has recently set her sights online as Dean of Fast Company's "Thirty Second MBA" video series on leadership.Follow the series of 10 Talent Resolutions for 2010.
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