Supplying the General Contractors of the Transformation Economy

An option to succeed in transformations without being a guider

I read The Economist religiously – but usually a few weeks to a month or so after publication when I’m traveling. I highly recommend it for its coverage of the world (although it always has a section on the US) and its top-notch business section. This especially includes its anonymous – heck, all the pieces in the weekly magazine are anonymous – business columns “Schumpeter” and “Bartleby”. It has also the most interesting and quirky image captions you will ever read.

This article caught my eye for its intimation of disruption and overtones of modularity

Anyway, catching up on a not-quite-recent issue I came across the article “Florida is running a radical experiment in education”. In the paper newspaper (as it likes to call itself) the title was “The unbundling”, which is what caught my eye for its intimation of business and government disruption with overtones of modularity. (The link above should enable you to read it without a subscription.)

The Unbundling of Education

It opened by talking about a high school Homecoming in Tampa, Florida for kids that didn’t attend an actual school; rather, the event for “untraditional high-schoolers was hosted by one of more than a thousand organisations in the city that help parents curate an à la carte education for their children” (emphasis added). Think about that. Over one thousand companies exist in a city of 400,000 as modules to help parents design, curate, and assemble the education of their kids.

This disruption of the “traditional” high school education resulted from a 2023 state law that greatly expanded school-choice programs by giving money directly to parents to use how they saw fit. The result (I was going to write “end result”, but this is a thus-far result):

In Hillsborough County, where Tampa sits, at least one in every 15 children is homeschooled—more than anywhere else in the state. The typical Florida homeschooler is no longer a mother teaching her children at the kitchen table all alone. Instead, parents now act as general contractors, selecting their children’ schooling from a wide range of suppliers and shuttling them between lessons and extra-curricular classes. Many of these pupils have learning disabilities that make conventional school hard. But what is happening in Tampa is much broader. This year the county’s public schools lost 7,000 pupils to “deschooling”, as well as to more familiar charter, magnet and private schools. (emphasis added)

And this “unbundling of education”

is shaking up the school system. Conventional schools want to join in. Private ones now offer “homeschooling days”, where pupils can come in one day a week. Public schools allow families to pay to enroll in individual courses like statistics, or play on the football team. “We haven’t had to market our traditional schools in the past and now we have to,” says Howard Hepburn, the superintendent of Broward County public schools, Florida’s second-biggest district.

General Contractors in the Transformation Economy

I bolded the term “general contractors” above because it’s exactly the method by which many people transform – and what most people have always done to achieve their aspirations – or, in this case, the aspirations they have for transformation beneficiaries such as their kids. Here’s an example I used in the post Integrating Solutions:

Of course, people – as well as organizations, businesses, and communities – can be their own general contractor and “hire” everything they need. Think of an aspiration to get more fit. A person could hire organic foodstuffs, self-help books, fitness-tracking devices and apps, fitness centers, and a personal trainer to achieve that aspiration.

Most people have always been their own general contractors of transformations

What’s different today as the Transformation Economy looms on the horizon is that aspirants almost always have another choice: hire a transformation guider to help them achieve their aspirations.

So for you to be that choice, you must convince them you’ll do it better than customers acting as their own general contractors. You must show that you know what you’re doing – ideally that you’ve done it before. And you must execute your transformation offering so that it actually does guide your customers to achieve their aspirations.

To cap it off, you also must charge for the demonstrated outcomes your customers achieve. I know I write this a lot – oh, such as here, here, and just two weeks ago, here – but that’s because it’s crucial to understand, embrace, and deploy outcomes-based pricing. In this particular case, it tells – make that shouts – to aspirants that you are serious, that you really can do it better than they can do it themselves. You guarantee it.

You also can be a general contractor and integrate goods, services, and experiences

That still doesn’t mean you have to do it all. You also can be a general contractor and integrate the goods, services, and experiences that you offer with those of other companies that supply them. In the fitness example above, you can be the company that creates and maintains the customer relationship, who hires the personal trainer to operate out of a fitness center (if not the aspirant’s own home), that integrates into the fitness regimen customers’ own devices and selects the right apps to use, that curates any books that might be used as well as other goods (such as protein powders) that would be of benefit, and delineates the proper foodstuffs to eat and how much (if not packaging them together into delivered meals).

Finding Your Role in the Transformation Economy

So you can be the full transformation guider who guides the transformation yourself, primarily through your own internal resources. Or you can be the general contractor, taking over that responsibility from aspirants themselves.

Or. . . you have one more option. You can be a trusted supplier to the general contractor, doing what you do best today as a commodity extractor, goods manufacturer, service provider, or experience stager. This is a viable option particularly if you are independent, a small company, or a niche supplier. You don’t have to transform your own company to find your role in the Transformation Economy.

The third option: be a trusted supplier to the general contractor, doing what you do best

And there’s no dishonor in making that choice! You do have to be worried about being commoditized over time, so work to differentiate, innovate, and maintain a great relationship with your customer, the transformation guider.

But it may absolutely be the right answer for you, depending on your circumstances and personal & corporate aspirations.

Joe

© 2025 B. Joseph Pine II