THE BIGGER THE BETTER

Having just spent two weeks in Venice – a small place with an indigenous population of around 60,000 I couldn’t help reflecting on the old Latin maxim “memento mori”. Broadly this means “remember death” or (more colloquially)”watch it cock this won’t last”.

Well it didn’t last that long for Venice.

In the late 14th century they had 180,000 living there - three times the size of London, it was the most powerful city in Europe, with 36,000 sailors, over 3,000 ships, (and en passant 20,000 courtesans), it was the centre for printing presses (so the silicon valley of the world then), trade nexus of the world, was populated by polyglots, renaissance men and women, was a true republic and  about to become the artistic and cultural capital of the world.

It was the Apple, Google and Amazon combined of their day…and then some. You didn’t get bigger than Venice.

Michael Geogehan, one time briefly CEO of HSBC (“memento mori Mike”) wryly observed it had been the banking centre of the world and was now just a water attraction.

I remember thinking that when, as it will, HSBC fades away no one will think it worth more than a footnote. Venice, on the other hand, has left, in its very presence, a wonderful legacy that allows us to see “memento mori”, as it were, made flesh.

Most of all Venice is proof that big is not beautiful but that unreasonably good is.

Last week I watched the topplingly-high Costa ships easing in to berth at Venice and thought “your time is over buddy”. The Costa Concordia crash and the economy has dented Carnival’s profits and they all looked rather empty.

Big is not beautiful.

The advertising equivalent of overlarge cruise ships, Costa Publicom - the merger of Omnicom and Publicis - seems similarly pointless and with a built in “wallow”.  Because the word to attach to the bigness mania is “wallowing”.

On Newsnight recently we had confirmation of one guru’s view of the subject. Harvard Professor Clay Christensen on tech firms failing to innovate: "Nokia is essentially gone, BlackBerry is essentially gone and now Apple is next".

Apple is wallowing.

He described the fact that innovation was slowing down as companies were sitting on outdated technology or capital investment.  Apple’s closed architecture will kill it, he said, using elaborate hand movements.

Meanwhile Tesco and the rest of the retailers are sitting on dinosaur out-of-town hypermarkets, the big accountancy firms are like cruise liners looking for negligence-malpractice icebergs.

I wonder - haven’t we learnt from the big car company fiascos?  Big is not beautiful.

Returning to Venice…it still retains its power but in a different way.

Its power is over our souls.

Being engaged by timeless worth is beautiful and inspiring and Venice has it. Water attraction indeed….only a banker could get something quite so wrong.