3 ms·

Interviewing only the disgruntled and fired is just as one-sided as business books that determine rules of success by only interviewing people who made it rich.

Interviewing only the disgruntled and fired is just as one-sided as business books that determine rules of success by only interviewing people who made it rich. What's the opposite of survivor bias? Just to give the other side as somebody who worked there for a while and retired pretty successful, driving big changes isn't trivial but it isn't hard either. As an individual with an idea, you don't have to do ROI, fill out complicated budgeting forms, etc. Just make it work and then convince your managers -- all of whom are techies! -- that it's a good idea and you're willing to spend the time to make it happen. But I did see a lot of people fail with their "great idea" when they didn't want to be the one to build and ship it. Nobody there is going to do your work for you.

MikeCapone 17y ago
Can you give example of innovations that bubbled from the bottom like that and that were shipped?
- plinkplonk 17y ago
  Not sure if F# and Linq were innovations that "bubbled up" but I think they are innovative products that transitioned well from MS Research to shipping products. (Due Disclosure: I don't use any MS products and haven't in years)
- DrJokepu 17y ago
  The group of technological innovations that made Windows 3.0 vastly superior to OS/2 did bubble from the bottom. The Microsoft management was focusing on OS/2 at that time. http://blogs.msdn.com/larryosterman/archive/2005/02/02/365635.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/larryosterman/archive/2005/02/02/36563...
  - jimbokun 17y ago
    That was a while ago.
- JamieEi 17y ago
  OneNote is a good example: http://blogs.msdn.com/chris_pratley/archive/2004/01/30/onenote-genesis.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/chris_pratley/archive/2004/01/30/oneno... You could argue that OneNote wasn't truly a bottom-up creation because Chris Pratley was already a pretty senior guy at MS when he started working on it.
- larsberg 17y ago
  The VS2010 text editor and MEF (the Microsoft Extensibility Framework). To be honest, I'd have a harder time naming innovative features that shipped at Microsoft and didn't come up from the bottom. Pushing innovation from the top seems like it would be really hard for anyone not named Steve Jobs :-)
  - mbreese 17y ago
    What about things that aren't developer tools? It seems to me that a lot of the more interesting things coming out of Microsoft have been developer tools and languages. These just scream like something that should be bottom-up style innovation. No one ever said MSFT didn't have top-notch developers. And developers tend to produce cool tools for themselves to use. What about something more consumer facing? Has there been anything like that to come out in a while?

MikeCapone 17y ago

Can you give example of innovations that bubbled from the bottom like that and that were shipped?

plinkplonk 17y ago
Not sure if F# and Linq were innovations that "bubbled up" but I think they are innovative products that transitioned well from MS Research to shipping products. (Due Disclosure: I don't use any MS products and haven't in years)
DrJokepu 17y ago
The group of technological innovations that made Windows 3.0 vastly superior to OS/2 did bubble from the bottom. The Microsoft management was focusing on OS/2 at that time. http://blogs.msdn.com/larryosterman/archive/2005/02/02/365635.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/larryosterman/archive/2005/02/02/36563...
- jimbokun 17y ago
  That was a while ago.
JamieEi 17y ago
OneNote is a good example: http://blogs.msdn.com/chris_pratley/archive/2004/01/30/onenote-genesis.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/chris_pratley/archive/2004/01/30/oneno... You could argue that OneNote wasn't truly a bottom-up creation because Chris Pratley was already a pretty senior guy at MS when he started working on it.
larsberg 17y ago
The VS2010 text editor and MEF (the Microsoft Extensibility Framework). To be honest, I'd have a harder time naming innovative features that shipped at Microsoft and didn't come up from the bottom. Pushing innovation from the top seems like it would be really hard for anyone not named Steve Jobs :-)
- mbreese 17y ago
  What about things that aren't developer tools? It seems to me that a lot of the more interesting things coming out of Microsoft have been developer tools and languages. These just scream like something that should be bottom-up style innovation. No one ever said MSFT didn't have top-notch developers. And developers tend to produce cool tools for themselves to use. What about something more consumer facing? Has there been anything like that to come out in a while?