3 ms·

I sort of agree with both of you. Yes, you can do it in a small shop, and my company does. A lot, actually. But I wouldn't say we exactly allocate time to innov

I sort of agree with both of you. Yes, you can do it in a small shop, and my company does. A lot, actually. But I wouldn't say we exactly allocate time to innovation. It's more about taking a long view and integrating the long view mentality into projects with tight deadlines and immediate needs. It takes a lot of work, and it feels quite different than the luxury of overt R&D and an emphasis on creating tools. We still mostly have to keep the development of tools to an as-needed basis and just take those opportunities to put an eye on the future. It's a delicate balance. So to me the GP is not wrong when saying that these companies like Facebook have a serious luxury. That's the luxury to repeatedly experiment and fail with little relative consequence to the business. The rest of us can't afford to spend nearly as much time or make nearly as many mistakes.

nickpsecurity 11y ago
Good points. I agree with the point about luxury: some definitely have way more lee-way than others. Your company's method is one of the good methods I referred to. Another is Jane St's where they apparently dedicated time and labor to building better Ocaml tools (incl standard library). Almost every Global 2000 company can afford to do 100x that. Some, to their credit, are contributing things to IT community. Most just don't and even reinforce problems with their decisions. So, there's certainly a huge gap between most companies and Facebook. Yet, even allocating one person, day, 15% time, etc. to try or build some new things might have quite some results over thousands to hundreds of thousands of companies. I'm just arguing companies could be putting in significantly more effort even without a true R&D department or luxurious business model. Past that, mileage varies from company to company esp with their circumstances.

nickpsecurity 11y ago

Good points. I agree with the point about luxury: some definitely have way more lee-way than others. Your company's method is one of the good methods I referred to. Another is Jane St's where they apparently dedicated time and labor to building better Ocaml tools (incl standard library). Almost every Global 2000 company can afford to do 100x that. Some, to their credit, are contributing things to IT community. Most just don't and even reinforce problems with their decisions. So, there's certainly a huge gap between most companies and Facebook. Yet, even allocating one person, day, 15% time, etc. to try or build some new things might have quite some results over thousands to hundreds of thousands of companies. I'm just arguing companies could be putting in significantly more effort even without a true R&D department or luxurious business model. Past that, mileage varies from company to company esp with their circumstances.