I liked the first half of the essay - some interesting nuggets of some possible ideas, particularly the point about schisms forming rather than continued collective action once a group becomes large enough.
The last half sounds a little bit too much like the bias towards markets and profit motives and whatnot without question and without critique. There are plenty of dysfunctional for-profit orgs that don't allocate resources well, in spite of overwhelming feedback, from the market and elsewhere. The majority of for-profit orgs also have a sales team that is out there pounding the pavement trying to drive sales: it's not all, "Build it and they will come."
I don't buy that a successful company needs to be a mission either. That's very common thinking in the startup world, but not even close to representative of the whole.
The last half sounds a little bit too much like the bias towards markets and profit motives and whatnot without question and without critique. There are plenty of dysfunctional for-profit orgs that don't allocate resources well, in spite of overwhelming feedback, from the market and elsewhere. The majority of for-profit orgs also have a sales team that is out there pounding the pavement trying to drive sales: it's not all, "Build it and they will come."
I don't buy that a successful company needs to be a mission either. That's very common thinking in the startup world, but not even close to representative of the whole.