by Dean Zatkowsky (Author)
E Pluribus Kinko's describes how a highly democratic business structure helped Kinko's grow and profit for thirty years, and how the loss of democracy contributed to the company's decline and disappearance. From 1970 to 1999, Kinko's grew from a one-hundred-square-foot copy shop to a two-billion-dollar industry leader with over 1,000 branches worldwide, with thousands of engaged and participative citizen-coworkers. The foundations of our democracy were The Philosophy, which was like a constitution that clearly articulated stakeholder rights and expectations, our Partnership Ethos, which used profit sharing to spread the benefits and responsibilities of citizenship throughout the organization, and our habit of Pot-Stirring, which produced the frequent revolutions Thomas Jefferson believed were necessary in a healthy democracy. It was very messy - and very profitable.
Author Biography
Guerrilla Writer Dean Zatkowsky is Managing Partner of Dizzy One Ventures LLC. He is the co-author of Two Billion Dollars in Nickels: Reflections on the Entrepreneurial Life (Booksurge: 2008), and The Entrepreneurial Investor: The Art, Science and Business of Value Investing (Wiley; 2007).