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>>A large corporation doesn't have the agility or culture to experiment with risky projects. Nor do they want to, because when a bigcorp project publicly fails

>>A large corporation doesn't have the agility or culture to experiment with risky projects. Nor do they want to, because when a bigcorp project publicly fails the PR hit will shave billions off their market cap. In general I agree with you, but Apple, Google, and Amazon all have very risky, very high profile internal projects in their portfolios. These are also the main companies playing the acquisition game in SV.

austenallred 11y ago
Regardless of how risk-tolerant a company is, no company would ever pretend to have a monopoly on successful innovation. The only scenario in which there would be zero acquisitions would be if the company could create everything that would be of value to it within the company. Of course, that will never happen.
onion2k 11y ago
In general I agree with you, but Apple, Google, and Amazon all have very risky, very high profile internal projects in their portfolios. When you're that big a failure tends to be written up as "They tried and couldn't do it, so it must be impossible. But weren't they brilliant for trying!" Failure is marketed as success.
wernercd 11y ago
So they have some R&D... but how much can each company really do at any given moment? For every research project Apple or Microsoft does, how many projects are under work at $random_startup? For ever good thought Apple or MS has, how many ideas does someone come up with that otherwise would have never been considered?
- dm2 11y ago
  It's advantageous to have both environments pumping out new technologies, obviously. The environment at Google and MS is that they have near unlimited resources (legal, monetary, intelligence, computing, patents) to create a working product that can be mass-produced quickly if it's a success. A large company might have some red-tape to go through, but it will also already have all of the HR and management systems setup so that project managers can focus on creating the product. The Project Tango device for example went from concept to thousands of 100% working devices in developers hands in just 1.5 years. The low-level drivers are integrated with Android in a way that no 3rd-party startup would be able to do. The talent they acquired (former DARPA director, Kinect engineers) would have not been possible without large company resources. Ideas are not what is important, we all have brilliant ideas that millions of other people have had. You have to be able to take those ideas and actually create a product or service that people can use.
qq66 11y ago
Their high risk internal projects are billion-dollar gambles like virtual reality and self-driving cars that need their scale and resources. They don't typically experiment with anonymous chat apps, photo apps that change the image to make it look like it's from the '70s, etc.
volaski 11y ago
Exactly like you said, Apple had Ping. Google had Google plus, Wave, Google Glass, and countless other projects that failed horribly. And you can't say these failures didn't affect them at all. These PR hits DO shave billions off their market cap, not to mention their confidence to take more risks.

austenallred 11y ago

Regardless of how risk-tolerant a company is, no company would ever pretend to have a monopoly on successful innovation. The only scenario in which there would be zero acquisitions would be if the company could create everything that would be of value to it within the company. Of course, that will never happen.

onion2k 11y ago

In general I agree with you, but Apple, Google, and Amazon all have very risky, very high profile internal projects in their portfolios. When you're that big a failure tends to be written up as "They tried and couldn't do it, so it must be impossible. But weren't they brilliant for trying!" Failure is marketed as success.

wernercd 11y ago

So they have some R&D... but how much can each company really do at any given moment? For every research project Apple or Microsoft does, how many projects are under work at $random_startup? For ever good thought Apple or MS has, how many ideas does someone come up with that otherwise would have never been considered?

dm2 11y ago
It's advantageous to have both environments pumping out new technologies, obviously. The environment at Google and MS is that they have near unlimited resources (legal, monetary, intelligence, computing, patents) to create a working product that can be mass-produced quickly if it's a success. A large company might have some red-tape to go through, but it will also already have all of the HR and management systems setup so that project managers can focus on creating the product. The Project Tango device for example went from concept to thousands of 100% working devices in developers hands in just 1.5 years. The low-level drivers are integrated with Android in a way that no 3rd-party startup would be able to do. The talent they acquired (former DARPA director, Kinect engineers) would have not been possible without large company resources. Ideas are not what is important, we all have brilliant ideas that millions of other people have had. You have to be able to take those ideas and actually create a product or service that people can use.

qq66 11y ago

Their high risk internal projects are billion-dollar gambles like virtual reality and self-driving cars that need their scale and resources. They don't typically experiment with anonymous chat apps, photo apps that change the image to make it look like it's from the '70s, etc.

volaski 11y ago

Exactly like you said, Apple had Ping. Google had Google plus, Wave, Google Glass, and countless other projects that failed horribly. And you can't say these failures didn't affect them at all. These PR hits DO shave billions off their market cap, not to mention their confidence to take more risks.