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This is Jamie Quint's blog covering technology, entrepreneurship, economics, and anything else interesting.

It seems that one of the easiest ways of being successful is to open new horizons for people, to make something possible that before was only available to somebody with a lot of money, or someone with a certain specific skillset. Simply Democratize. This isn’t a new concept, Henry Ford was successful because he democratized the automobile, Apple was successful (In its early years) because it democatized the computer. The idea of “The Long Tail” (see previous post), which seems to be the blueprint for success as of late, is simply democratization on steroids. Is there a direct correlation between empowering people and success? Absolutely.

2 Responses to “Democratize”

  1. I don’t think that word means what you think it means. Everywhere I look about democratisation, it talks about the workers for a specific company being given more rights; not about the end user, or “eventual recipient” of the product, as you inferred.

    Workplace democracy is the application of democracy in all its forms (including voting systems, debates, democratic structuring, due process, adversarial process, systems of appeal, and so on) to the workplace.

    I’m not sure about the Apple process, but I’m quite sure that Ford had very few worker rights.

    Ray

  2. Democratize - to introduce democratic reforms

    Dem - to rule
    Crat - people (in this case consumers)

    I am talking about companies being successful by empowering the consumer, I am not talking about workers rights (or even workplace democracy).

    jamiequint

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