1820s Company Size

Mike Maples shares insights about how companies have evolved since the 1800s.

"In 1820, you wouldn't recognize a normal company of today. There weren't any companies with more than 20 people in the US - maybe a few spinning looms of 100 people, but that was it. Around 1850, we developed centralized means of production and mass distribution, which created the modern corporation. By 1870, there was no accounting, no org charts - none of the stuff we take for granted as a company really existed.

Mass production and mass distribution had a tendency to centralize things because you got supply-side economies of scale. But starting in the late seventies and early eighties with the microprocessor, the economy became animated by mass computation and mass connectivity. These two attributes tend to decentralize the means of production.

We've moved from the River Rouge plant for Ford Model T's to personal 3D printers in the future. We've moved from peak centralization of 3 TV networks in the late fifties/early sixties to now anybody can be their own publisher or media company that goes direct. A lot of very basic assumptions we have about companies are just 150-year artifacts of time."