3 ms·

This article / talk seems entirely focused on company boundaries - what's in-sourced and outsourced - but isn't that sort of secondary? If you have a group of

This article / talk seems entirely focused on company boundaries - what's in-sourced and outsourced - but isn't that sort of secondary? If you have a group of 500 people contributing to the making of a toaster, whether they all call themselves Company A (with many divisions) or are split into many companies, it's kind of the same when the rubber meets the road - it's 500 people working together in some fashion to produce a toaster. How you draw the lines around them and what company/division names you write on top is sort of secondary.

lordnacho 5y ago
I think it does matter how the 500 people are set up: - Information flows become adversarial. I don't want to tell my customer they're wasting money on the heating element, because what they waste ends up in my pocket. - Incentives are different. Customer wants the best heating element for their use case, but I want the one that I can sell to as many customers as possible, so I'll nudge them towards this one that seems to fit that description. - Marketing arm sees an opening and wants to innovate. Sadly they don't speak the same language as the techs, metaphorically and literally. You could say this is the same problem that the whole world has. Why aren't we all a global village, able to make decisions like saving the planet? Incentives are cut up and fall different ways because we don't see each other as one, and can't communicate that well.
- cutemonster 5y ago
  In addition to that, a supplier might want to bill as many hours as possible, and dislike time saving innovations. And might happily proceed with building things they know won't be useful or after a broken spec. All this sounds like major big bad things to me.
pas 5y ago
Bert's point is that those 500+ people should be in the EU. The EU should fund and maintain certain capabilities, like building, maintaining, and innovating communications networks, from fabs to finance.

lordnacho 5y ago

I think it does matter how the 500 people are set up: - Information flows become adversarial. I don't want to tell my customer they're wasting money on the heating element, because what they waste ends up in my pocket. - Incentives are different. Customer wants the best heating element for their use case, but I want the one that I can sell to as many customers as possible, so I'll nudge them towards this one that seems to fit that description. - Marketing arm sees an opening and wants to innovate. Sadly they don't speak the same language as the techs, metaphorically and literally. You could say this is the same problem that the whole world has. Why aren't we all a global village, able to make decisions like saving the planet? Incentives are cut up and fall different ways because we don't see each other as one, and can't communicate that well.

cutemonster 5y ago
In addition to that, a supplier might want to bill as many hours as possible, and dislike time saving innovations. And might happily proceed with building things they know won't be useful or after a broken spec. All this sounds like major big bad things to me.

pas 5y ago

Bert's point is that those 500+ people should be in the EU. The EU should fund and maintain certain capabilities, like building, maintaining, and innovating communications networks, from fabs to finance.