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> There was a fatalism to the culture; a sense that any initiative had to be simultaneously super low risk and guaranteed to generate $1B in revenue within a co

> There was a fatalism to the culture; a sense that any initiative had to be simultaneously super low risk and guaranteed to generate $1B in revenue within a couple of years. It had to be 100% predictable and planned month by month years in advance Ultimately, this is what MBA-style corporations do. They want unfettered predictability and massive revenues from every initiative. They even set up corporate structures to penalize failures. As a result, layers and layers of managers, and managers and engineers are all risk averse. They will be penalized for being wrong, their jobs and livelihoods are put on stake. What does one expect in such an environment? Innovation/risk-taking or politics of self-preservation/blaming/backstabbing? The MBA-style is a failure for innovation and Intel should be a case study in every MBA school.

nradov 2y ago
Have you ever taken an MBA course? It's so weird for you to refer to "MBA-style corporations" considering that "The Innovator's Dilemma" by Clayton M. Christensen has literally been a core text in most MBA programs for decades. If anything, Intel has become an anti MBA-style corporation. https://hbsp.harvard.edu/product/10706-PDF-ENG https://hbsp.harvard.edu/product/10706-PDF-ENG
- nine_zeros 2y ago
  "MBA-style corporations" does not mean that they have read the innovators dilemma. An MBA-style corporation is one that is lost in a vast trove of metrics. They focus too much on the birds-eye view dashboard style of work - ultimately forgetting that it is less important to meet metrics and more important to keep innovating. The metric-driven production is well suited for warehouses and factories where every unit is the same as the other. Because every unit is the same your business can focus on eeking optimizations visible via metrics. But technology is not like that at all. Every unit of production is so different from one another. You cannot have a top heavy company that is just focusing on metrics. You need the top to be intelligently engaged with market, customers, systems, and employees. Put in another words, if your company's primary focus is margin management, shareholder return, and squeezing production (MBA-school style), your company will have a very very hard time innovating. Case in point - Intel - which has haemorrhaged itself with years of focus on buybacks and dividends and unit production - but not studying the market, studying modern tech, and innovation.
  - etempleton 2y ago
    I think the issue with MBA-led companies is that you have people with an MBA that have very little direct experience. The MBA itself is useful, but detached from the experience of the industry and organization leads to misguided thinking.
    - nine_zeros 2y ago
      That is correct. MBA degree can be useful. But just hiring an MBA who doesn't have an appreciation and skill in the domain is just going to do what they can - counting metrics.
brookst 2y ago
Eh, I have an MBA, and that is not at all my experience. At my program, there was a ton of focus on agility, avoiding sunk cost fallacies, the importance of a healthy corporate culture, what a tax elaborate structures can be, and so on. And it was before Intel failed, but we had case studies on IBM, Enron, and General Motors and how misaligned incentives led to incompetence, corruption, and failure. You may have had bad experiences with some individual MBAs (they run the gamut, just like everyone else), or you may have absorbed some stereotypes, but that's really not at all what is taught.

nradov 2y ago

Have you ever taken an MBA course? It's so weird for you to refer to "MBA-style corporations" considering that "The Innovator's Dilemma" by Clayton M. Christensen has literally been a core text in most MBA programs for decades. If anything, Intel has become an anti MBA-style corporation. https://hbsp.harvard.edu/product/10706-PDF-ENG https://hbsp.harvard.edu/product/10706-PDF-ENG

nine_zeros 2y ago
"MBA-style corporations" does not mean that they have read the innovators dilemma. An MBA-style corporation is one that is lost in a vast trove of metrics. They focus too much on the birds-eye view dashboard style of work - ultimately forgetting that it is less important to meet metrics and more important to keep innovating. The metric-driven production is well suited for warehouses and factories where every unit is the same as the other. Because every unit is the same your business can focus on eeking optimizations visible via metrics. But technology is not like that at all. Every unit of production is so different from one another. You cannot have a top heavy company that is just focusing on metrics. You need the top to be intelligently engaged with market, customers, systems, and employees. Put in another words, if your company's primary focus is margin management, shareholder return, and squeezing production (MBA-school style), your company will have a very very hard time innovating. Case in point - Intel - which has haemorrhaged itself with years of focus on buybacks and dividends and unit production - but not studying the market, studying modern tech, and innovation.
- etempleton 2y ago
  I think the issue with MBA-led companies is that you have people with an MBA that have very little direct experience. The MBA itself is useful, but detached from the experience of the industry and organization leads to misguided thinking.
  - nine_zeros 2y ago
    That is correct. MBA degree can be useful. But just hiring an MBA who doesn't have an appreciation and skill in the domain is just going to do what they can - counting metrics.

brookst 2y ago

Eh, I have an MBA, and that is not at all my experience. At my program, there was a ton of focus on agility, avoiding sunk cost fallacies, the importance of a healthy corporate culture, what a tax elaborate structures can be, and so on. And it was before Intel failed, but we had case studies on IBM, Enron, and General Motors and how misaligned incentives led to incompetence, corruption, and failure. You may have had bad experiences with some individual MBAs (they run the gamut, just like everyone else), or you may have absorbed some stereotypes, but that's really not at all what is taught.