3 ms·
> I see no need to read that pablum. Maybe it would expose you to information that's outside your own personal experience? AT&T was quite a big company in its
by freyir 7y ago
> I see no need to read that pablum.
Maybe it would expose you to information that's outside your own personal experience?
AT&T was quite a big company in its prime, a monopoly in fact, but extremely innovative. Same goes for Xerox. I suspect Google's longer-reaching research efforts (quantum computing, machine learning) could pay off similar dividends eventually, if they aren't regulated out of existence.
Yes, big companies are often hampered by bureaucracy. Many are not innovative. And in all cases, the majority of employees need to focus on the bread-and-butter work that keeps the lights on. But big companies also have the resources needed to invest in long-term R&D with potentially big payoff down the road.
Conversely, you could make the case that most SV start-ups are actually not that innovative, and that SV as a whole gets perversely fixated on the past: every occasional success, whether it's social media or mobile apps or the gig economy, spawns a thousand imitators hoping to cash in on past success. Do we really need to be funneling hundreds of billions of dollars to create more "Like X but for Y" smartphone apps?
- Supermancho 7y ago> Maybe it would expose you to information that's outside your own personal experience? I've seen this stuff for DECADES. Another book is not on the menu. NOTHING has changed and pretending there's new insight is pointless. > big companies also have the resources needed to invest in long-term R&D with potentially big payoff down the road. Very few do this (AMZ is one, MSFT another). The exceptions do not make a rule, nor do they "innovate" (iterative improvement) as much as "experiment" to break into new markets. This is an important observation, which is a good indicator of the level of analysis performed. It's important to note, innovation itself rarely lends to a successful company, which is a different discussion and necessarily colors the state of things.
- freyir 7y ago> NOTHING has changed and pretending there's new insight is pointless. The book is 35 years old, and Drucker himself was 76 years old when it was published. He was considered a well-respected guy in the field, to understate it somewhat, and he had also seen this stuff for decades.