3 ms·
Looks like the product/engineering/creative focused time of Google is giving way to the metric/marketing/MBA/McKinsey people for a fully pedal to the metal push
by drawkbox 7y ago
Looks like the product/engineering/creative focused time of Google is giving way to the metric/marketing/MBA/McKinsey people for a fully pedal to the metal push into their Ballmer phase.
When will technology/product/engineering/creative companies learn that the value creation is more important than the value extraction? With value creation there is always the ability to value extract. With value extraction the focus, and little research and development or innovative value creation, eventually it stagnates and sputters.
The product before the sales/marketing is key. A product of value can always be sold or marketed. You can't sell/market your way to a product.
As a developer, and investor, in Google this concerns me the move away from Alphabet, moonshots and research and development. The open mode is needed just like the closed mode [1]. The open mode is where value is realized, the closed mode is where it is produced [1]. Value is created in a state of play or creativity, this is usually the first thing to go in these phase changes at a company.
This happens at every company that creates immense value, eventually the research and development is hard to quantify the value so they cut and cut like Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree, eventually it is just a stump and all the grace and built up value is tapped.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pb5oIIPO62g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pb5oIIPO62g
- LifeLiverTransp 7y agoI wish there was some paper that would quantify the dangers of this take over down into hard numbers, so that they could be used in the never ending internal civil wars of value creation vs value-usage. In a ironic way though, this life-cycle reflects what we humans go through though. We have a fragile phase, where we must find our place, develop new things, risk it all, then we settle in, apply the learned things to our conquered niche and set to full cruise mode, to produce turtles eggs, to repeat the cycle. So if a society wants to propell the exploration onwards, there are two ways. Eternal youth, as in never growing fully up, always replace aging elements with new rebelious and clueless young elements. The other, is acclerate the aging &reproduction period. For example allow for Managers, who can proof that there company is stagnant- has a stranglehold on a market, to split a sub-department from the main company (including IP) and thus accelerate the new turtle baby phase.
- Gustomaximus 7y agoValue creation is still around but they move from building it to buying it.
- sorenjan 7y agoThe product people get driven out from the decision making, and history repeats itself. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AxZofbMGpM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AxZofbMGpM
- jariel 7y agoThis characterisation as business people not creating value is false - MS is mostly a 'business' driven company and they've been growing forever. By every measure, Ballmer was a massively succesfull CEO. He grew income by 3x, moved MS into the cloud, integrated recurring pricing, went full web with MS Office, so many other things. Satya has not done any better in terms of creating more revenue.
- chooseaname 7y ago> When will technology/product/engineering/creative companies learn that the value creation is more important than the value extraction? When MBAs stop thinking that every penny has to be returned to investors.
- pasttense01 7y agoNonsense. MBAs believe the money mostly has to be returned to management--who get paid massive salaries and benefits for often mediocre results.