Thomas Friedman makes note of the inverse relationship between natural resources and economic vibrancy in Sunday’s New York Times with an Op Ed entitled “Hold the oil, pass the books.” His long held intuition about this - that lack of resources breeds resourcefulness by developing human potential – has been substantiated in a recent OECD study.

I’ve seen aspects of this phenomenon in my life on both personal and professional levels. The first relates to my family background. My Dad was born in Albania, and the immigrant mantra is “educate your kids so they will have a better life than you.” A couple of years ago, I was at a celebration for the 100^th anniversary of the South Boston “mother church” and heard that the latest wave of Albanian immigrants are disproportionately distinguishing themselves as top students in the Boston Public School system. So that old world mantra appears to be alive and well.

Friedman’s idea also resonates with me on a professional level in its parallels to business. Just as a lack of natural resources spurs countries to be resourceful, or that a resource-rich country can let education languish, I have seen how a lack of financial resources drives resourcefulness in business and, conversely, have seen plenty of well-funded companies that didn’t meet their potential.

From our perch at World Energy, we competed with over 40 auction competitors, many of whom had received millions of dollars of VC investment. Flush with cash, they ramped up sales, built technology, and had lavish office space. Self-funded with support from “friends and family,” bank lines, an angel round, and eventually public capital, we chose a channel partner distribution model vs. direct sales, leased technology paying a fee on each successful transaction, and opened our NY office at One Navigator Plaza (our CEO’s Lincoln).

By living within our means and treating traditional costs as variable (sales and IT), when market conditions became challenging - new markets not opening as rapidly as forecast, spike in energy prices, recession - we were able to hunker down, and survive, where most of our competitors went out of business. This “do more with less” approach honed our creativity - launching an exchange to broker demand response, outsourcing to Lithuania, and our approach to recruiting. It also breeds an entrepreneurial culture, where people are rewarded for out of the box ideas. I’m happy to say all this is bearing fruit at World Energy, where we just announced our first year of profitability as a public company, record annual revenue and profit, and projections of 40-60% top-line growth in 2012.

Sometimes less is more.