In 1966, the USA invested two millions to research and develops the “Fisher” which a kinds of pencil lead. It can be written on a piece of paper in the space that is a zero gravity environment. However, the Russian wondered why they didn’t use the pencil if they just wanted to write something. According to this short story, we can realize the size of the company depends on their finance capability, organization structure and turnover. Following sections are some similarities and differences between working in family-owned business and working in a large company.
Some similarities on both of them are manpower, products and strategy. The corporation is run on by labor power whether a big company which has globe service or a family-owned company that only has three workers. And the next is product. The company has to sell their product which is tangible or intangible in order to make profit. So no matter which company you work in, you still have to sell the product to the customer. The last is strategy. The big company may have targeted a trillion of profit by their star products for the year, and the family-owned company probably sells the single item to their target account nearby their company. It is called strategy whatever they focus on something, no matter who make the strategy.
Some differences between big company and family-owned company are promotion, organization structure and financial support. First is promotion. For example, the P&G can use their perfect logistics to sell a new product, and a lot of workers to arrange their product to the final selling stores in the short time. Another words, it is very convenient to promote our product to the market if we work in a big company. However, working in a family-owned company may have to spend a lot of time to cope with the transportation or something else because of strength limited. The next is organization structure; normally, the organization of family-owned company is flat structure, this structure can save more time from communication. Working here doesn’t need to communicate with a lot of departments. And the family-owned company could adjust and adopt strategy to face the changeable market instantaneously. Nevertheless, the big company can’t execute strategy at once because of multistory structure. The last is financial support. The big company has a lot of money due to shareholders’ support, but the family-owned company has to restrict to spend their own money. Thus, working in the owned company may feel tight of budget.
There are some similar and different aspects between working in the family-owned company and working in a big company. The similarities are manpower, product selling and making strategy, and the differences are product promotion, organization structure and money support. We can’t only see the surface when you work in a company whether it is big or not. Whatever the scale of your company, working hard is the only way. As the story of beginning, people may laugh at the American because they spent the money to invent the Fisher, but the truth is the pencil may hurt the eyes or the equipment when the pencil lead break in the zero gravity environment.