The Power of Corporations

Building on Scott’s excellent post about LinkedIn and what it could do for small businesses, I wanted to add my thoughts on how to harness the power to big business for small business.  I’ve been thinking for awhile now that a significant advantage big business has is casual networking.  You find it most prevalent when you need niche expertise and some guy knows a guy who’s an industry expert.  The company can then offer him a contractor or permanent position on Project X.  LinkedIn helps in that area, in that it automates the whole "i know a guy who knows a guy" aspect.  I think the big idea is to extend that from hiring someone on to doing other aspects of the business.  Costco does good business by leveraging the buying power of a corporation to get small businesses good prices on food, merchandise, and supplies.  How could a company leverage the influence of a large corporation for ad buys and market research for small businesses that don’t have the connections or budgets to do those things themselves?  Would that work?  Would small business even want to buy-in to that kind of environment? I’m not sure, but I’d be interested to hear people’s opinions.