Link: applematters.
However contrarians will say might does not necessarily win every battle. Astute thinkers will note that as a corporation grows in size innovation often suffers. There is no better illustration of this fact than the chemical industry. Huge companies are currently having a very difficult time discovering useful compounds. Some large corporations have essentially given up on research and instead focus on buying compounds from smaller, more flexible firms. It appears that when a corporation reaches truly behemoth like proportions the levels of management start interfering with innovation.
Once a company becomes big enough to need to create a middle management innovation vanishes.
And it has to.
Middle managements survival is dependent on things staying pretty much the same. They are essentially trapping themselves in a Skinner box of their own creation. They are getting status, self-valuation, self-validation, and money and they are not, cannot even, risk those things by trying something new that might take all those things away.
Apple is one of the few large companies that actually innovates at home rather then just buying some other company that has produced something new.
Middle Management likes status quo, will tolerate evolutionary change if it is clearly defined but completely rejects revolutionary change.
Actually put in those terms it makes sense that Intel and Windows do so well in the corporate world, they clearly define how things are going to change in the long term.
Apple on the other hand plays close to the vest and completely changes everything (kind of CPU, type of OS) if not regularly then very often.
A middle manager can look at what Intel and Microsoft are doing and feels secure that they will be around in 20 years, or about as long as he is. But that also means they all of them are reacting to changes that occur rather then acting.
Apple acts to be the change and while not always successful it has still made many good changes in everyone computing experience.
Acting is always better then reacting.
Another idea.
Something that could help those big sterile companies is to support incubators so people with ideas can get together and try to make something new. They would take on the role of angel investors or VCs but they could also or instead provide office space in underused building and some of their salvage equipment that still works, old desks, chairs and the like.
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