Brad Feld, one of my favorite business bloggers recently posted about horizontal and vertical scaling. Like he says, the Wikipedia definitions of horizontal and vertical scaling are both simple and useful:
- Scale Vertically (or “scale up”): Add resources to a single node in a system, typically involving the addition of CPUs or memory to a single computer.
- Scale Horizontally (or “scale out”): Add more nodes to a system, such as adding a new computer to a distributed software application.
In business, entrepreneurs very often think vertically first. You open your shop and get to work selling widgets. Pretty soon, you realize that if you add employees, you can make your little node in the market more efficient. And so a small shop turns into a bigger shop which sometimes turns into a Really Big Shop.
At some point, you realize that you can’t usefully employ another body at the shop, so you figure out horizontal scaling: you replicate the system and hire a manager to run another Really Big Shop doing the same things in the next town over.
Neither kind of scaling is better than the other, they’re suited to different problems. But the best organizations figure out the right mix between vertical and horizontal scaling in how they do their work and then they run with it.
Otherishness in business is a question of how well we apply vertical and horizontal scaling to why we work.
Business owners and employees also tend to think vertically first. Because we primarily work for our own well-being, we want to increase our salary and our top line revenue as much as possible.
But at some point, we’ll realize that we can’t usefully use another dollar or another day of vacation. When that happens we have to find another reason to work. If our reason for working includes someone else’s well-being, then every time we manage to help another person replicate our success, we’re scaling horizontally.
And if you ask me, the best organizations figure out the right mix between vertical and horizontal scaling in why they do their work and then they run with it.
