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This article is complete conjecture. Having worked in a highly innovative environment and ‘informally surveying’ a random sample of people from random companies

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.)

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.)