In “The Tipping Point” Malcom Gladwell writes:
TBWT is the brainchild of criminologists Jams Q Wilson and George Kelling. Wilson and Kelling argues that crime is the inevitable result of disorder. If a window is broken and left unrepaired, people walking by will conclude that no one cares and no one is in charge. Soon, more windows will be broken, and the sense of anarchy will spread from the buildings to the streets on which it faces, sending a signal that anyting goes. In a city, relatively minor problems like grafitti, public disorder, and agressive panhandling, they write, are allt the equivalent of broken windows, invitations to more serious crime.

To me the same relation between entrprenours and their corporate behaviour is obvious. A lot of smaller businesses I have meet and worked with is confident that their clients and the outside world understands the level of which their company is at; small and DIY. And that the clients compare the corporate behaviour to the people running the company.

But to the outside eye they are and will always be compaired to their competitors, no matter if they are the two guys around the corner or the multimillion dollar corporation abroad. They will be judged on the building they reside in, no matter the size.

Too many times smaller companies are not paying attention to the detalis, it might be a logotype set in a bad font, self taken photogaphs, a badly coded webb, not thinking about what and how thay communicate … they think “It’s good enough, people will know that we are nice guys who try the best we can” … but the outside sees broken windows here and there.

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