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I think the core assumption of this essay is that innovation can be had only with startups. This is something I personally believed as well in the past, probab

I think the core assumption of this essay is that innovation can be had only with startups. This is something I personally believed as well in the past, probably because of my experience with highly hierarchical companies and middle management. This idea changed after hearing how teams work independently from each other at Amazon. I'm not sure if this is really the case at Amazon, but I believe that if a company is able to organise itself so that you essentially have an internal market of tiny startups instead of teams (so they have freedom to pursue their products, they can fail and they can be hugely successful) you can replicate most of the startup benefits. I've been trying to propose this model in the companies I've worked at - but generally there is always some Napoleone on top who vetoes risky bets or force teams to work on non productive endeavours. You can get approved some practices that give more freedom to individual contributors, but important decisions always need to be directly or indirectly approved on the top. I'd be curious to know what M$ did internally

PragmaticPulp 6y ago
> I've been trying to propose this model in the companies I've worked at - but generally there is always some Napoleone on top who vetoes risky bets or force teams to work on non productive endeavours. You need a separate R&D division that plays by different rules than the established product division. New product/market R&D is expensive, slow, and risky. If a company swings too far to the sales-oriented mindset, new R&D ventures can look very unappealing under typical models. Sales-minded executives would rather focus on the investments they know, such as hiring more sales people or increasing advertising expenditure. Having a separate division responsible for R&D allows them to play by different rules and take more risky, longer-term bets. However, this is easier said than done. These R&D budgets are usually the first thing on the chopping block when sales are down and executives need to clean up the budget numbers. It's also extremely difficult to transition new products out of R&D and into their own, sustainable divisions. Some companies, executives, and engineers get hooked on tinkering with new product R&D and forget that they have to turn things into long-term product offerings. This is how you end up with constant product churn like Google's ever-expanding graveyard of abandoned products.

PragmaticPulp 6y ago

> I've been trying to propose this model in the companies I've worked at - but generally there is always some Napoleone on top who vetoes risky bets or force teams to work on non productive endeavours. You need a separate R&D division that plays by different rules than the established product division. New product/market R&D is expensive, slow, and risky. If a company swings too far to the sales-oriented mindset, new R&D ventures can look very unappealing under typical models. Sales-minded executives would rather focus on the investments they know, such as hiring more sales people or increasing advertising expenditure. Having a separate division responsible for R&D allows them to play by different rules and take more risky, longer-term bets. However, this is easier said than done. These R&D budgets are usually the first thing on the chopping block when sales are down and executives need to clean up the budget numbers. It's also extremely difficult to transition new products out of R&D and into their own, sustainable divisions. Some companies, executives, and engineers get hooked on tinkering with new product R&D and forget that they have to turn things into long-term product offerings. This is how you end up with constant product churn like Google's ever-expanding graveyard of abandoned products.