7 ms·

Innovative Cultures

125 points by r4um 8y ago

pbadenski 8y ago
"But despite the fact that innovative cultures are desirable and that most leaders claim to understand what they entail, they are hard to create and sustain. This is puzzling." I really don't see how this is puzzling.. there's plenty of people living in denial, sure, but there's whole a load of people who understand intellectualy how to do all kind of things: lead a happy fulfilling life, bring up your kids in a healthy way, be physically healthy. Knowing things is really overrated.
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AlexTWithBeard 8y ago
TL, DR: the article argues that all the fancy buzzwords like "tolerance for failure" must be counterbalanced by ye goode olde stuff from Management 101: - a tolerance for failure requires an intolerance for incompetence - willingness to experiment requires rigorous discipline - psychological safety requires comfort with brutal candor - collaboration must be balanced with a individual accountability - flatness requires strong leadership.
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- sjclemmy 8y ago
  >> - psychological safety requires comfort with brutal candor I would disagree with this. Candour and honesty do not have to be brutal to be effective in this context.
  - denzil_correa 8y ago
    Brutal doesn't mean disrespectful and the article does dive into this > When it comes to innovation, the candid organization will outperform the nice one every time. The latter confuses politeness and niceness with respect. There is nothing inconsistent about being frank and respectful. In fact, I would argue that providing and accepting frank criticism is one of the hallmarks of respect. Accepting a devastating critique of your idea is possible only if you respect the opinion of the person providing that feedback.
    - tonyedgecombe 8y ago
      >Brutal doesn't mean disrespectful It has done every time I've seen it.
      - otabdeveloper1 8y ago
        You're probably just an big crybaby.
      - Nasrudith 8y ago
        It depends on how respect is defined as well. Ask any school child about being demanded respect(obedience) for respect(treated like a person). Some may literally consider honesty more important than concern for feelings. It is also a somewhat cultural thing - in some it is rude to ask politely to someone well known to "please pass" as opposed to "gimme". Etiquite is ironically very contextual.
      - ticviking 8y ago
        Often when I have seen it escalate to that level it has been due to the individual being criticized being totally oblivious to anything more subtle.
        tonyedgecombe 8y ago
        Possibly, in my experience it was more about the person dishing out the advice and had little to do with the recipient.
      - 8y ago
  - mc32 8y ago
    I think brutal in this case means “brut” as in champagne, no sugar added, so unvarnished critique, but not spiteful or destructive in any way.
    - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
      The problem with that at scale is that some people can sneak in spite where there looks to be none and others hear spite where there is none.
      - maxxxxx 8y ago
        That’s why you need a culture that allows people to listen to criticism without immediately feeling the need to be defensive. At work I have a few people I can be honest with and it’s very refreshing. I can tell them that I think some this isn’t right and they can tell me. If there is mutual respect and self confidence you can do that.
  - Nasrudith 8y ago
    Really psychological safety to me personally seems like it is better defined as non-authoritarian and just - or free although all are offputtingly political. A mob mentality can also act as the "authoritarian" that retaliates against "inappropriate thought". The vagueness of terms is deliberate because it is culturally specific what their elephants in the room are. Even if you think it is worth risking them or they are objectively stupid it is important to keep them in mind for planning presentations. It is worth ignoring those who think eradicating a disease is playing god but know that some think that to prepare accordingly. "Authoritarian" organizations fall into insanity obvious to fearless outsiders. For instance intelligence agencies fired people for being gay or otherwise sexually unorthodox. Now it is damn obvious - they created their own blackmail risk in the first place! Compare to a "tenured" system that said they don't give a damn so long as you aren't betraying secrets. So they could laugh off would be blackmailers. To give a colorful illustration of the effectiveness of such a policy. "The New York Times could print a full page spread of me sleeping with my brother in law and wife at the same time and I would still have a job!" That this would be considered unthinkable to propose in that time period only demonstrates the depth of the problems.
  - maxxxxx 8y ago
    I think people have different connotations with “brutal”. I would say “straightforward” or “unguarded”.
    - levythe 8y ago
      Undecorated might be another way of putting it.
  - munchbunny 8y ago
    I would not personally phrase it that way. When you say "brutal candor," the ones who understand how to create psychological safety will understand it as the ability to give real criticism without fear of retaliation. That's rare and refreshing when I see it. However, I can think of several cases of managers I know who really should learn to create psychological safety, but they would read this as validation for establishing a straight pipeline from reptile brain to mouth as opposed to giving actionable criticism. In one case, that literally happened: the manager read a book that framed communication with similar connotations to "brutal" and took it as license that he should continue to say things the way he did and expect others to suck it up. Unsurprisingly, it got so bad that all of his direct reports threatened to leave.
    - kochikame 8y ago
      It's more often referred to as "radical candor", and it comes with an assumption of caring about the other person https://www.radicalcandor.com/ https://www.radicalcandor.com/
- crispyambulance 8y ago
  Usually, HBR articles favor Captain Kirk style snap-decision-making, C-level-wannabe folks LOVE THAT. This one is a little more nuanced by DARING to suggest that there's a flip-side to every decision and that one has to embrace paradox. Truly talented managers already know that intrinsically. Bad one's just won't understand-- they'll just see what they want to see, "oh look, it says here that Amazon does rank-and-yank, hmmm, that's 'intolerance for incompetence' maybe I should do that!"
  - maxxxxx 8y ago
    "Usually, HBR articles favor Captain Kirk style snap-decision-making, C-level-wannabe folks LOVE THAT. " And the guy with the red shirt always dies. Kirk always gets away.
    - jnsaff2 8y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redshirts_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redshirts_(novel)
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- PakG1 8y ago
  Your summary reads like Netflix's culture page: https://jobs.netflix.com/culture https://jobs.netflix.com/culture
- wwwdonohue 8y ago
  This is the essence of most business writing, especially in academia where this writer is from: qualification and hedging of one's arguments to the point of basic incomprehensibility.
  - WillPostForFood 8y ago
    Did you really find the article incomprehensible? What parts did you have a hard time understanding?
    - Retra 8y ago
      I take it they found the advice incomprehensible, not the article itself. Like when someone says "always use the right tool for the job" but consistently fails to say what tool is right for what job and what makes it so. It's hedging so severe that you may as well say "I have no opinion."
      - maxxxxx 8y ago
        Nice explanation. I would add “I have no opinion but I still want to look like a leader”. It’s the same with guys who always ask “insightful” questions but never answer a question.
simon_000666 8y ago
This article is complete conjecture. Having worked in a highly innovative environment and ‘informally surveying’ a random sample of people from random companies that may or may not be innovative are completely different things. There is no attempt here to identify how one might measure ‘an innovative culture’ nor can the author call on personal experience to at least talk anecdotally. This is just another puff piece to further validate the ‘Arbeit macht frei’ Culture that is currently fashionable in silicone valley and China.
- jmull 8y ago
  I think the purpose of an article like this isn't so much about delivering facts as it is about proposing a useful mental model. This one is working through the concept of companies having innovative cultures and pointing out that each of the (presumed) positive/happy/fun attributes of innovative business cultures come with aspects that aren't so nice. It is all hand waving but the purpose isn't to get anyone (I assume the main audience here is executives and managers) to take specific actions but to get them to adopt this mental model. To me, the general message is a pretty good one: the good/positive/happy/fun things you want probably also have less good/positive/happy/fun implications and you have to deal with those implications effectively or the good stuff won't actually end up being good. The article just iterates over a set of things considered positive traits of innovative cultures and applies this concept. Each of the positive traits are vague, ambiguous, and ill-defined so the counter-point traits can't be better. I guess someone could potentially study the success of adopting the general approach implied by this article. (That is, whether focusing on dealing with the negative implications of a business approach helps the approach be more successful.)
astazangasta 8y ago
This is dumb. Apple did not have an innovative culture. Xerox PARC did. Innovative != commercially successful.
- throwawaymath 8y ago
  Why do you say Apple didn't have an innovative culture?
  - est31 8y ago
    Probably this is the reason: > In 1979, Steve Jobs arranged a visit to Xerox PARC, in which Apple Computer personnel would receive a demonstration of the technology from Xerox in exchange for Xerox being able to purchase stock options in Apple. After two visits to see the Alto, Apple engineers used the concepts to introduce the Apple Lisa and Macintosh systems. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_Alto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_Alto
  - tartoran 8y ago
    "During its early years, Xerox was not able to capitalize on the market potential of the research and development that was getting done at PARC. The benefit of that work accrued to other companies. During its early years, Xerox was not able to capitalize on the market potential of the research and development that was getting done at PARC. The benefit of that work accrued to other companies. For example, Apple launched the Macintosh Computer in 1984. This personal computer featured the GUI and a mouse, which for that era, was a revolutionary new innovation. But Apple had not invented the GUI or the mouse. This brilliant work had been done by the scientists at Xerox PARC. So why was it Apple and not Xerox that was launching a product in 1984 and benefiting from PARC’s great inventions? The answer to that question lies in the fact that R&D and invention are not enough. In order to innovate successfully, companies need frameworks, tools and processes that can help them take their inventions from ideas to commercial success."
  - analog31 8y ago
    I recall that Alan Kay distinguished invention and innovation: Invention is creating new things, and innovation is bringing them to market. He said that innovation creates billion dollar companies, but invention has created trillion dollar industries like semiconductors and computer networking.
Nasrudith 8y ago
Stack ranking (or Amazon's lipstickes pig version) is also the opposite of a good policy as it literally encourages sabotage of peers instead of cooperation (you know what an /organization/ should do) and operates on very faulty assumptions - about incoming averages vs existing labor pool /when the actors know about it/. It is no wonder now that their phone line failed and Fire has been tepid. It doesn't belong on a list of intolerance for incompetence - it /is/ incompetence on management's part.
- throwawaymath 8y ago
  > It is no wonder now that their phone line failed and Fire has been tepid. Your general point may be true, but using examples of specific products like this is really unconvincing. Amazon is one of the most valuable and successful companies in the world. How do you counter the phenomenal success of Amazon.com, Amazon Web Services and the Amazon Echo? Frankly, I think most companies wish they could be "incompetent" enough to have the smash hits that Amazon does.
- AlexTWithBeard 8y ago
  I've been through my fair share of forced rankings on both sides of the barrier. Despite of all my skepticism, the whole experience was pretty reasonable: - in small teams quotas are enforced pretty loosely. Everybody understands that in a team of five engineers all five can be good and smart - on the other hand, everybody understands that out of hundred people in the department there will be a couple of underperformers. - a department head may claim that all his one hundred people are brilliant, but extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence - usually there is a surprising consensus about who belongs to where. Yes, there are occasional clashes between the managers about whose guy is "brilliant" and whose is "exceptionally brilliant", but I've never ever seen a smart person being force ranked into a "bad" bucket
  - whatshisface 8y ago
    >the whole experience was pretty reasonable: in small teams quotas are enforced pretty loosely. Any set of rules can appear reasonable in practice when people ignore the rules when their results would be unreasonable.
SlightRespect 8y ago
I work in an organization that asks for innovation, but doesn't allocate any budget for R&D or investigative projects. The company also doesn't have any culture of being ok with taking big swings and accepting misses. The project deck is fully loaded with status quo type projects, based on client demands. Teams are asked to track all of their hours toward these projects. The subtext is, "Do the grunt work during your 40 hours that we're sure will generate revenue, and please, please, do something innovative on top of that on your own time/dime". It just comes off as begging.
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- ManlyBread 8y ago
  My previous workplace was exactly like that: they wanted people to build "cool tools that would help us do our job" but would not even let me refactor a piece of ugly code (I literally just wanted to have variable names that actually mean something). It's quite a pathetic display when a manager talks about innovation when devs are stuck with ancient versions of software they work with and there is zero chance of getting the corporate machine to allow us to update and even if we had the permission everything would move so slow that by the time the upgrade happens the software would already be old.
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  In my company it’s the same. They ask for innovation but the real message is “do something innovative but don’t change anything and always stay on your already tight schedule and don’t do anything management doesn’t approve “
- joker3 8y ago
  Same. This seems to be remarkably common.
- bluetwo 8y ago
  Corporate culture emminates from the top. You can't have a leader that rewards/punishes one way and managers who pick a different approach. So it only really works if those at the top embrace these ideas, otherwise you end up with this system where they communicate they value innovation, but in their behavior fail to do so.
steve76 8y ago
- Taking money from worldwide monsters who view mass murder as hygiene - Taking money from taxpayer bailouts and inflating prices - Dumping all your problems on the people who fought for you and gave you the room to get you started - Paying lawyers to stack the deck in your favor and jail your competition - Forcing your customers into debt by making your $2,000 products a necessity. - Turning your great country into a place where only cheap plastic goes in, and cheap paper goes out That's not failure. But being 2 weeks late on a feature is. Got it. PS: Take a good look at how you really make money. It's the most vulgar uncultured garbage I've ever seen. Porn has more dignity. Teach lessons. Otherwise you just race to the finish line as fast as you can, cowering to arbitrary delusions, and end up as some grotesque burden on everyone. There are loftier ambitions than cell phones, clickbait, mailing out boxes of tomorrow's garbage, or making cartoons. These are no different than police sting. You are a fool to think power gives it up to make things better. Aim for lofty ambitions first. Take all of creation before working for kings. And when you do, know there are poor people out there who can take them out with nothing.
moosey 8y ago
I think that what MIT considers innovative and what Harvard Business schools thinks is innovative are different, and the models for getting there are going to be different from each school of thought. The HBR article touches on some things that produce what I would consider innovation: Researchers and scientists using the scientific method, but it never goes that far. There are discussions here about Xerox PARC, and I would suggest including Bell Labs and probably a few other business research parks, and you'll find highly educated people given the freedom to experiment. I guess my argument is that in order to produce innovation, I think that the best thing that management can do is put the right people together and get out of the way, but undirected innovation might not aid the business. It's an interesting problem. EDIT: I should include the processes that developed things like Linux.
- Retra 8y ago
  Undirected innovation can aid the business if the business follows the innovation, rather than expecting the innovation to follow the business.
  - maxxxxx 8y ago
    From what I have read this is something Gates and Jobs were good at. They saw something new and could quickly see how it could be useful and then had the courage to make it happen.
timwaagh 8y ago
you know what, firing people isn't always a good idea either. people might be starting to get comfortable. if you're not going to offer google level salaries, you will have to offer job security because otherwise people will draw their conclusions way before you want to get rid of them. and always having inexperienced juniors is also not an option. these exceptional companies can get away with very aggressive hr practice because their salaries are off the charts and i do not think this can be taken as a guideline for other business at all.
HillaryBriss 8y ago
No one minces words about design philosophies, strategy, assumptions, or perceptions of the market. Everything anyone says is scrutinized (regardless of the person’s title). you can game this kind of culture. advance your career in such an "innovative" environment merely by frequently criticizing other people's ideas before they gain too much traction. then advance your own ideas and defend them by any means necessary. if you get really good at this, others will fear you and always run their ideas past you. you will become the gatekeeper. you will have power. and you don't, in the last analysis, have to be more correct than anyone else, just more difficult, more critical and more competitive. you are an advocate and a fighter. you don't have to be an engineer.
dalbasal 8y ago
I agree with pretty much everything, except maybe (I'd need to think to be sure) #4. A few kind of unrelated points about innovation within large, established companies. (1) A lot of these hard things (incompetence intolerance, flat but strong leadership model) are the easy default for a small, young company. So... a lot of this is about making large, old companies culturaly similar to small, young ones. No surprise that this is hard. (2) A lot of these points relate to "legibility^" issues. I wrote this one three times and it still doesn't make sense, so I'll just leave it to Venkat's awesome blog to explain. (3) the Economist Ronald coase's "theory of the firm" starts (paraphrase) with the question: if competitive markets are so efficient, why do companies run like Marxist states internally. Large company culture isn't arbitrary. It also isn't dictated by proclamations, value statements and such. It's a product of their structure, incentives and such. You can't fundamentally change the culture without changing the environment that formed it. ..the social and economic incentives, the feedback loops... I'm surprised there aren't more radical ideas in this space, to be honest. ^https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/07/26/a-big-little-idea-called-legibility/ https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/07/26/a-big-little-idea-call...

125 points by r4um 8y ago

"But despite the fact that innovative cultures are desirable and that most leaders claim to understand what they entail, they are hard to create and sustain. This is puzzling." I really don't see how this is puzzling.. there's plenty of people living in denial, sure, but there's whole a load of people who understand intellectualy how to do all kind of things: lead a happy fulfilling life, bring up your kids in a healthy way, be physically healthy. Knowing things is really overrated.

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AlexTWithBeard 8y ago

TL, DR: the article argues that all the fancy buzzwords like "tolerance for failure" must be counterbalanced by ye goode olde stuff from Management 101: - a tolerance for failure requires an intolerance for incompetence - willingness to experiment requires rigorous discipline - psychological safety requires comfort with brutal candor - collaboration must be balanced with a individual accountability - flatness requires strong leadership.

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sjclemmy 8y ago
>> - psychological safety requires comfort with brutal candor I would disagree with this. Candour and honesty do not have to be brutal to be effective in this context.
- denzil_correa 8y ago
  Brutal doesn't mean disrespectful and the article does dive into this > When it comes to innovation, the candid organization will outperform the nice one every time. The latter confuses politeness and niceness with respect. There is nothing inconsistent about being frank and respectful. In fact, I would argue that providing and accepting frank criticism is one of the hallmarks of respect. Accepting a devastating critique of your idea is possible only if you respect the opinion of the person providing that feedback.
  - tonyedgecombe 8y ago
    >Brutal doesn't mean disrespectful It has done every time I've seen it.
    - otabdeveloper1 8y ago
      You're probably just an big crybaby.
    - Nasrudith 8y ago
      It depends on how respect is defined as well. Ask any school child about being demanded respect(obedience) for respect(treated like a person). Some may literally consider honesty more important than concern for feelings. It is also a somewhat cultural thing - in some it is rude to ask politely to someone well known to "please pass" as opposed to "gimme". Etiquite is ironically very contextual.
    - ticviking 8y ago
      Often when I have seen it escalate to that level it has been due to the individual being criticized being totally oblivious to anything more subtle.
      - tonyedgecombe 8y ago
        Possibly, in my experience it was more about the person dishing out the advice and had little to do with the recipient.
    - 8y ago
- mc32 8y ago
  I think brutal in this case means “brut” as in champagne, no sugar added, so unvarnished critique, but not spiteful or destructive in any way.
  - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
    The problem with that at scale is that some people can sneak in spite where there looks to be none and others hear spite where there is none.
    - maxxxxx 8y ago
      That’s why you need a culture that allows people to listen to criticism without immediately feeling the need to be defensive. At work I have a few people I can be honest with and it’s very refreshing. I can tell them that I think some this isn’t right and they can tell me. If there is mutual respect and self confidence you can do that.
- Nasrudith 8y ago
  Really psychological safety to me personally seems like it is better defined as non-authoritarian and just - or free although all are offputtingly political. A mob mentality can also act as the "authoritarian" that retaliates against "inappropriate thought". The vagueness of terms is deliberate because it is culturally specific what their elephants in the room are. Even if you think it is worth risking them or they are objectively stupid it is important to keep them in mind for planning presentations. It is worth ignoring those who think eradicating a disease is playing god but know that some think that to prepare accordingly. "Authoritarian" organizations fall into insanity obvious to fearless outsiders. For instance intelligence agencies fired people for being gay or otherwise sexually unorthodox. Now it is damn obvious - they created their own blackmail risk in the first place! Compare to a "tenured" system that said they don't give a damn so long as you aren't betraying secrets. So they could laugh off would be blackmailers. To give a colorful illustration of the effectiveness of such a policy. "The New York Times could print a full page spread of me sleeping with my brother in law and wife at the same time and I would still have a job!" That this would be considered unthinkable to propose in that time period only demonstrates the depth of the problems.
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  I think people have different connotations with “brutal”. I would say “straightforward” or “unguarded”.
  - levythe 8y ago
    Undecorated might be another way of putting it.
- munchbunny 8y ago
  I would not personally phrase it that way. When you say "brutal candor," the ones who understand how to create psychological safety will understand it as the ability to give real criticism without fear of retaliation. That's rare and refreshing when I see it. However, I can think of several cases of managers I know who really should learn to create psychological safety, but they would read this as validation for establishing a straight pipeline from reptile brain to mouth as opposed to giving actionable criticism. In one case, that literally happened: the manager read a book that framed communication with similar connotations to "brutal" and took it as license that he should continue to say things the way he did and expect others to suck it up. Unsurprisingly, it got so bad that all of his direct reports threatened to leave.
  - kochikame 8y ago
    It's more often referred to as "radical candor", and it comes with an assumption of caring about the other person https://www.radicalcandor.com/ https://www.radicalcandor.com/
crispyambulance 8y ago
Usually, HBR articles favor Captain Kirk style snap-decision-making, C-level-wannabe folks LOVE THAT. This one is a little more nuanced by DARING to suggest that there's a flip-side to every decision and that one has to embrace paradox. Truly talented managers already know that intrinsically. Bad one's just won't understand-- they'll just see what they want to see, "oh look, it says here that Amazon does rank-and-yank, hmmm, that's 'intolerance for incompetence' maybe I should do that!"
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  "Usually, HBR articles favor Captain Kirk style snap-decision-making, C-level-wannabe folks LOVE THAT. " And the guy with the red shirt always dies. Kirk always gets away.
  - jnsaff2 8y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redshirts_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redshirts_(novel)
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PakG1 8y ago
Your summary reads like Netflix's culture page: https://jobs.netflix.com/culture https://jobs.netflix.com/culture
wwwdonohue 8y ago
This is the essence of most business writing, especially in academia where this writer is from: qualification and hedging of one's arguments to the point of basic incomprehensibility.
- WillPostForFood 8y ago
  Did you really find the article incomprehensible? What parts did you have a hard time understanding?
  - Retra 8y ago
    I take it they found the advice incomprehensible, not the article itself. Like when someone says "always use the right tool for the job" but consistently fails to say what tool is right for what job and what makes it so. It's hedging so severe that you may as well say "I have no opinion."
    - maxxxxx 8y ago
      Nice explanation. I would add “I have no opinion but I still want to look like a leader”. It’s the same with guys who always ask “insightful” questions but never answer a question.

simon_000666 8y ago

This article is complete conjecture. Having worked in a highly innovative environment and ‘informally surveying’ a random sample of people from random companies that may or may not be innovative are completely different things. There is no attempt here to identify how one might measure ‘an innovative culture’ nor can the author call on personal experience to at least talk anecdotally. This is just another puff piece to further validate the ‘Arbeit macht frei’ Culture that is currently fashionable in silicone valley and China.

jmull 8y ago
I think the purpose of an article like this isn't so much about delivering facts as it is about proposing a useful mental model. This one is working through the concept of companies having innovative cultures and pointing out that each of the (presumed) positive/happy/fun attributes of innovative business cultures come with aspects that aren't so nice. It is all hand waving but the purpose isn't to get anyone (I assume the main audience here is executives and managers) to take specific actions but to get them to adopt this mental model. To me, the general message is a pretty good one: the good/positive/happy/fun things you want probably also have less good/positive/happy/fun implications and you have to deal with those implications effectively or the good stuff won't actually end up being good. The article just iterates over a set of things considered positive traits of innovative cultures and applies this concept. Each of the positive traits are vague, ambiguous, and ill-defined so the counter-point traits can't be better. I guess someone could potentially study the success of adopting the general approach implied by this article. (That is, whether focusing on dealing with the negative implications of a business approach helps the approach be more successful.)

astazangasta 8y ago

This is dumb. Apple did not have an innovative culture. Xerox PARC did. Innovative != commercially successful.

throwawaymath 8y ago
Why do you say Apple didn't have an innovative culture?
- est31 8y ago
  Probably this is the reason: > In 1979, Steve Jobs arranged a visit to Xerox PARC, in which Apple Computer personnel would receive a demonstration of the technology from Xerox in exchange for Xerox being able to purchase stock options in Apple. After two visits to see the Alto, Apple engineers used the concepts to introduce the Apple Lisa and Macintosh systems. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_Alto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_Alto
- tartoran 8y ago
  "During its early years, Xerox was not able to capitalize on the market potential of the research and development that was getting done at PARC. The benefit of that work accrued to other companies. During its early years, Xerox was not able to capitalize on the market potential of the research and development that was getting done at PARC. The benefit of that work accrued to other companies. For example, Apple launched the Macintosh Computer in 1984. This personal computer featured the GUI and a mouse, which for that era, was a revolutionary new innovation. But Apple had not invented the GUI or the mouse. This brilliant work had been done by the scientists at Xerox PARC. So why was it Apple and not Xerox that was launching a product in 1984 and benefiting from PARC’s great inventions? The answer to that question lies in the fact that R&D and invention are not enough. In order to innovate successfully, companies need frameworks, tools and processes that can help them take their inventions from ideas to commercial success."
- analog31 8y ago
  I recall that Alan Kay distinguished invention and innovation: Invention is creating new things, and innovation is bringing them to market. He said that innovation creates billion dollar companies, but invention has created trillion dollar industries like semiconductors and computer networking.

Nasrudith 8y ago

Stack ranking (or Amazon's lipstickes pig version) is also the opposite of a good policy as it literally encourages sabotage of peers instead of cooperation (you know what an /organization/ should do) and operates on very faulty assumptions - about incoming averages vs existing labor pool /when the actors know about it/. It is no wonder now that their phone line failed and Fire has been tepid. It doesn't belong on a list of intolerance for incompetence - it /is/ incompetence on management's part.

throwawaymath 8y ago
> It is no wonder now that their phone line failed and Fire has been tepid. Your general point may be true, but using examples of specific products like this is really unconvincing. Amazon is one of the most valuable and successful companies in the world. How do you counter the phenomenal success of Amazon.com, Amazon Web Services and the Amazon Echo? Frankly, I think most companies wish they could be "incompetent" enough to have the smash hits that Amazon does.
AlexTWithBeard 8y ago
I've been through my fair share of forced rankings on both sides of the barrier. Despite of all my skepticism, the whole experience was pretty reasonable: - in small teams quotas are enforced pretty loosely. Everybody understands that in a team of five engineers all five can be good and smart - on the other hand, everybody understands that out of hundred people in the department there will be a couple of underperformers. - a department head may claim that all his one hundred people are brilliant, but extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence - usually there is a surprising consensus about who belongs to where. Yes, there are occasional clashes between the managers about whose guy is "brilliant" and whose is "exceptionally brilliant", but I've never ever seen a smart person being force ranked into a "bad" bucket
- whatshisface 8y ago
  >the whole experience was pretty reasonable: in small teams quotas are enforced pretty loosely. Any set of rules can appear reasonable in practice when people ignore the rules when their results would be unreasonable.

SlightRespect 8y ago

I work in an organization that asks for innovation, but doesn't allocate any budget for R&D or investigative projects. The company also doesn't have any culture of being ok with taking big swings and accepting misses. The project deck is fully loaded with status quo type projects, based on client demands. Teams are asked to track all of their hours toward these projects. The subtext is, "Do the grunt work during your 40 hours that we're sure will generate revenue, and please, please, do something innovative on top of that on your own time/dime". It just comes off as begging.

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ManlyBread 8y ago
My previous workplace was exactly like that: they wanted people to build "cool tools that would help us do our job" but would not even let me refactor a piece of ugly code (I literally just wanted to have variable names that actually mean something). It's quite a pathetic display when a manager talks about innovation when devs are stuck with ancient versions of software they work with and there is zero chance of getting the corporate machine to allow us to update and even if we had the permission everything would move so slow that by the time the upgrade happens the software would already be old.
maxxxxx 8y ago
In my company it’s the same. They ask for innovation but the real message is “do something innovative but don’t change anything and always stay on your already tight schedule and don’t do anything management doesn’t approve “
joker3 8y ago
Same. This seems to be remarkably common.
bluetwo 8y ago
Corporate culture emminates from the top. You can't have a leader that rewards/punishes one way and managers who pick a different approach. So it only really works if those at the top embrace these ideas, otherwise you end up with this system where they communicate they value innovation, but in their behavior fail to do so.

steve76 8y ago

- Taking money from worldwide monsters who view mass murder as hygiene - Taking money from taxpayer bailouts and inflating prices - Dumping all your problems on the people who fought for you and gave you the room to get you started - Paying lawyers to stack the deck in your favor and jail your competition - Forcing your customers into debt by making your $2,000 products a necessity. - Turning your great country into a place where only cheap plastic goes in, and cheap paper goes out That's not failure. But being 2 weeks late on a feature is. Got it. PS: Take a good look at how you really make money. It's the most vulgar uncultured garbage I've ever seen. Porn has more dignity. Teach lessons. Otherwise you just race to the finish line as fast as you can, cowering to arbitrary delusions, and end up as some grotesque burden on everyone. There are loftier ambitions than cell phones, clickbait, mailing out boxes of tomorrow's garbage, or making cartoons. These are no different than police sting. You are a fool to think power gives it up to make things better. Aim for lofty ambitions first. Take all of creation before working for kings. And when you do, know there are poor people out there who can take them out with nothing.

moosey 8y ago

I think that what MIT considers innovative and what Harvard Business schools thinks is innovative are different, and the models for getting there are going to be different from each school of thought. The HBR article touches on some things that produce what I would consider innovation: Researchers and scientists using the scientific method, but it never goes that far. There are discussions here about Xerox PARC, and I would suggest including Bell Labs and probably a few other business research parks, and you'll find highly educated people given the freedom to experiment. I guess my argument is that in order to produce innovation, I think that the best thing that management can do is put the right people together and get out of the way, but undirected innovation might not aid the business. It's an interesting problem. EDIT: I should include the processes that developed things like Linux.

Retra 8y ago
Undirected innovation can aid the business if the business follows the innovation, rather than expecting the innovation to follow the business.
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  From what I have read this is something Gates and Jobs were good at. They saw something new and could quickly see how it could be useful and then had the courage to make it happen.

timwaagh 8y ago

you know what, firing people isn't always a good idea either. people might be starting to get comfortable. if you're not going to offer google level salaries, you will have to offer job security because otherwise people will draw their conclusions way before you want to get rid of them. and always having inexperienced juniors is also not an option. these exceptional companies can get away with very aggressive hr practice because their salaries are off the charts and i do not think this can be taken as a guideline for other business at all.

HillaryBriss 8y ago

No one minces words about design philosophies, strategy, assumptions, or perceptions of the market. Everything anyone says is scrutinized (regardless of the person’s title). you can game this kind of culture. advance your career in such an "innovative" environment merely by frequently criticizing other people's ideas before they gain too much traction. then advance your own ideas and defend them by any means necessary. if you get really good at this, others will fear you and always run their ideas past you. you will become the gatekeeper. you will have power. and you don't, in the last analysis, have to be more correct than anyone else, just more difficult, more critical and more competitive. you are an advocate and a fighter. you don't have to be an engineer.

dalbasal 8y ago

I agree with pretty much everything, except maybe (I'd need to think to be sure) #4. A few kind of unrelated points about innovation within large, established companies. (1) A lot of these hard things (incompetence intolerance, flat but strong leadership model) are the easy default for a small, young company. So... a lot of this is about making large, old companies culturaly similar to small, young ones. No surprise that this is hard. (2) A lot of these points relate to "legibility^" issues. I wrote this one three times and it still doesn't make sense, so I'll just leave it to Venkat's awesome blog to explain. (3) the Economist Ronald coase's "theory of the firm" starts (paraphrase) with the question: if competitive markets are so efficient, why do companies run like Marxist states internally. Large company culture isn't arbitrary. It also isn't dictated by proclamations, value statements and such. It's a product of their structure, incentives and such. You can't fundamentally change the culture without changing the environment that formed it. ..the social and economic incentives, the feedback loops... I'm surprised there aren't more radical ideas in this space, to be honest. ^https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/07/26/a-big-little-idea-called-legibility/ https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/07/26/a-big-little-idea-call...