It's about communication strategies

It may be difficult to map this exotic scenario across to e-business and e-commerce. The trick is to use an abstraction: extracting out the essence of the system, shorn of all the detail. The bottom line here is that an unconventional business approach had organised people into a communicating framework.

It is quite obvious that the real work was being carried out by the professionals: the lady running the workroom and the expert technicians in the manufacturing unit, but, it is not so obvious that these professional were working on designs that had evolved from the erratic and inexpert opinions of a small group of totally unreliable people: most of whom wouldn't have any chance at all of being selected for a position in a respectable company.

The significance of this can only be truly appreciated if seen in the context of the whole of the Rag Trade. There are thousands of designers, wholesalers and manufacturers vying with each other for the attention of the public and the fashion press. Some of the companies are large, employing hundreds of people that included dozens of top class designers with CVs as long as your arm. Yet a motley crowd of amateurs had come from nowhere and got out in front.

It might be pertinent here to ask who was the designer or the decision maker. Who created the successful designs that took this company to the front in a highly competitive field full of experts? It certainly wasn't me. It wasn't any of the staff. It was the system: designing itself.

The success was not brought about by expert knowledge and skills (although they were an essential part of the evolving organisation.); success came through the creation of a suitably focussed communication network. Isn't this what the Internet is about? Isn't it a perfect environment for creating imaginative communication strategies. Again we are back to the same common denominator. It isn't about the technology: it is about communicating with people.