Author and marketing guru Seth Godin has just added two terrific posts on this subject to his blog, “Small is the new big” and “More on Small.” Run, don’t walk, to read both of these excellent pieces. Here’s a short excerpt to motivate you to read more:

Today, little companies often make more money than big companies. Little churches grow faster than worldwide ones. Little jets are way faster (door to door) than big ones.

Today, Craigslist (18 employees) is the fourth most visited site according to some measures. They are partly owned by eBay (more than 4,000 employees) which hopes to stay in the same league, traffic-wise. They’re certainly not growing nearly as fast.

Small means the founder makes a far greater percentage of the customer interactions. Small means the founder is close to the decisions that matter and can make them, quickly.

Small is the new big because small gives you the flexibility to change the business model when your competition changes theirs.

Small means you can tell the truth on your blog.

Small means that you can answer email from your customers.

Small means that you will outsource the boring, low-impact stuff like manufacturing and shipping and billing and packing to others, while you keep the power because you invent the remarkable and tell stories to people who want to hear them.

A small law firm or accounting firm or ad agency is succeeding because they’re good, not because they’re big. So smart small companies are happy to hire them.

A small restaurant has an owner who greets you by name.

A small venture fund doesn’t have to fund big bad ideas in order to get capital doing work. They can make small investments in tiny companies with good (big) ideas. [My comment: I especially like this one!]

A small church has a minister with the time to visit you in the hospital when you’re sick.

Is it better to be the head of Craigslist or the head of UPS?

Here’s a few of my own contrasts of small and big:

Small means staying within your circle of strengths. Big is the idea that your size makes you smart.

Small means flushing mistakes without hesitation and moving on. Big means worrying about what Wall Street might think.

Small is coming up with new ways to measure your progress. Big means using a peer group of similarly sized companies in your industry to compare yourself against.

Small means selecting good people and focusing on internal growth. Big means making lots of acquisitions for stock.

Small means being able to experiment. Big means being afraid to invest (e.g. corporate America currently hoarding record levels of cash.)

Small means not having a large legacy IT system to care and feed. Big means the IT department specializes in patches and plugging “leaks.”

Small means being able to say “no” to a bad piece of business without worrying about next quarter’s earnings. Big means doing whatever you can to make this quarter’s number.

Small means tiny successes have a big impact on the company. Big doing a major acquisition to avoid having to admit the company’s internal growth is abysmal.

Small means dealing with employees individually and in small groups. Big means an auditorium full of employees (with thousands of others tied in by video feed) hearing the latest “pep talk” from the CEO.

Small is liberating. Big is suffocating.