4 ms·

When I worked for Microsoft, this part: "Then, you simply start over with another brand new, small thing, and grow it from there, while lending it the HR resou

When I worked for Microsoft, this part: "Then, you simply start over with another brand new, small thing, and grow it from there, while lending it the HR resources of the core." ...never worked. Because the core businesses (Windows and Office) were $10B products. Investing a little bit to get a 0.1% move in revenue there, brought in $10M more. It was bloody difficult to persuade anyone that the $ should be invested in a brand new startup idea, rather than re-investing it in the core, growing business. And who can blame them? There were two businesses that mattered, and everything else was a distraction. Actually after a while, the combination of Windows Server and SQL Server became a business that mattered, too. In those days, everything else was a weed that might/could grow, if it could shoot up and grab some attention and look pretty, before the groundskeeper just snipped it off at the base. If you look at what succeeded at Microsoft since then, it has not been "investing in some some small thing." It has been MASSIVE investments in things, like Azure and Xbox. Of course, MSFT also made MASSIVE investments in plenty of things that did not work out. But the point is, proposing to start with a brand new small thing, was a sure way to be asked to get with the program, or leave the company.

zzzcpan 10y ago
Well, small things are very competitive, everyone can do them and do them better than a large corporation optimized for innovation-killing efficiency. I guess it's only natural for a corporation to go big and do massive investments in big things, because there is almost no one on that level to compete on innovations, no matter how poor they are.
quaunaut 10y ago
But a lot of that would depend upon support structure or company architecture, right? After all, if the idea of starting something new gets you asked to leave the company, the company itself is probably hostile to new proposals, so it's fundamentally against what I'm talking about. I don't disregard what you're saying- but it's a huge mentality shift, to be able to do things like this. I also think it'd be beneficial to run such an organization in a smaller side-company, similar to what Alphabet does, than merely as a new department inside of a huge monolith like a Microsoft. Otherwise, you risk just this sort of thing, and being able to consistently maintain a culture of creation in something meant to last a century or longer is incredibly difficult.

zzzcpan 10y ago

Well, small things are very competitive, everyone can do them and do them better than a large corporation optimized for innovation-killing efficiency. I guess it's only natural for a corporation to go big and do massive investments in big things, because there is almost no one on that level to compete on innovations, no matter how poor they are.

quaunaut 10y ago

But a lot of that would depend upon support structure or company architecture, right? After all, if the idea of starting something new gets you asked to leave the company, the company itself is probably hostile to new proposals, so it's fundamentally against what I'm talking about. I don't disregard what you're saying- but it's a huge mentality shift, to be able to do things like this. I also think it'd be beneficial to run such an organization in a smaller side-company, similar to what Alphabet does, than merely as a new department inside of a huge monolith like a Microsoft. Otherwise, you risk just this sort of thing, and being able to consistently maintain a culture of creation in something meant to last a century or longer is incredibly difficult.