Part of the reason that large companies do not appear to be innovative is
the management and the paradigms they have.
The ideas used by Apple to put on he screen icons and a mouse came from
Xerox research as did ethernet. Xerox had invented the office as we know
it today but the management could not see an office as their engineers had
envisioned it. Management could not see the value of the ideas they had
funded.
A similar story exists with bicycle brakes. The market clammered fro hand
brakes and drillers for 'adult bikes. The management of Bendix want to
stick to the mainstream coaster brakes for children's bikes and not get
involved with peripheral products.
Also electronic fuel injection was invented by engineers at Bendix who
used the names Stromberg & Zenith. The patents were so basic that any use
of electronics to control fuel was na infringement. Yet due to short
sighted strategy by management Bendix ended up as an also ran in the
switch to EFI.
Ideas come from all sorts of places but management controls the outcome
and in my experience they have been so busy controlling they forgot to
look and see where they taking the company.
Gene
Eugene Taurman
interLinx ilx@execpc.com http://www.execpc.com/~ilx
"There is no such thing as an immaculate perception.
What you see depends upon what you thought before you looked."
--Eugene Taurman <ilx@execpc.com>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>