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Innovation has two main components, r&d and commercial application. While giant organizations produce decent amounts of r&d, it's generally small businesses tha

by hcho 15y ago

Innovation has two main components, r&d and commercial application. While giant organizations produce decent amounts of r&d, it's generally small businesses that come up with the commercial applications. Hence, the myth.

Locke1689 15y ago
While giant organizations produce decent amounts of r&d, it's generally small businesses that come up with the commercial applications. I'm not really sure that's true. Bell Labs produced a whole lot of innovative research -- how much of that actually ended up being implemented by small companies instead of by large companies or open source projects?
nhaehnle 15y ago
Disruptive commercial applications come from small businesses for obvious reasons. This may just be perception bias in the end. The amount of innovative R&D that is implemented and commercially applied by large companies is nothing to sneeze at. Of course, the best examples of such behavior probably comes from outside the IT sector, in more traditional engineering disciplines (think e.g. car manufacturing (outside the US, maybe)).
rbranson 15y ago
Is there any evidence to support this? The value I see generated by small businesses and entrepreneurs has more to do with market incentives, not innovation. I'm seeing them mostly create wealth by offering different mixes of price, quality, and packaging, but mostly built on existing innovation that has already been commercially applied. 37Signals, for instance, didn't really innovate. They didn't invent groupware or were nowhere near the first to commercially apply it. They simply built a product with the right levels of price, quality, and packaging that hit the right spot for a large number of people. This isn't as much innovation as it is market savvy and competitiveness. This isn't to say that they aren't very important though, quite the contrary. Small businesses create vast amounts of wealth, and more often directly reward those who are responsible for it, rather than further lining the pockets of the super rich or bureaucrats.

by hcho 15y ago

Locke1689 15y ago

While giant organizations produce decent amounts of r&d, it's generally small businesses that come up with the commercial applications. I'm not really sure that's true. Bell Labs produced a whole lot of innovative research -- how much of that actually ended up being implemented by small companies instead of by large companies or open source projects?

nhaehnle 15y ago

Disruptive commercial applications come from small businesses for obvious reasons. This may just be perception bias in the end. The amount of innovative R&D that is implemented and commercially applied by large companies is nothing to sneeze at. Of course, the best examples of such behavior probably comes from outside the IT sector, in more traditional engineering disciplines (think e.g. car manufacturing (outside the US, maybe)).

rbranson 15y ago

Is there any evidence to support this? The value I see generated by small businesses and entrepreneurs has more to do with market incentives, not innovation. I'm seeing them mostly create wealth by offering different mixes of price, quality, and packaging, but mostly built on existing innovation that has already been commercially applied. 37Signals, for instance, didn't really innovate. They didn't invent groupware or were nowhere near the first to commercially apply it. They simply built a product with the right levels of price, quality, and packaging that hit the right spot for a large number of people. This isn't as much innovation as it is market savvy and competitiveness. This isn't to say that they aren't very important though, quite the contrary. Small businesses create vast amounts of wealth, and more often directly reward those who are responsible for it, rather than further lining the pockets of the super rich or bureaucrats.