Monday, June 16, 2008

Inovations - Out of box thinking

There is a lack of innovation in the big companies. e.g IBM, Google, HP, etc.
Let’s talk about Google; the core innovation in Google was from two friends, who develop a search code in the beginning. I do not know any product or service which was developed after that. Only other popular products from Google are acquisition of small innovative companies. The same pattern you can see across the board in all major companies. This is not specific to IT only. We can see this too in other industry segments too.
I think the main reason for this is due to the close company structures. Most of the big companies have a big R&D center and every body working in the R&D center is getting monthly salary for doing an innovation. An innovation never happened in this way before and will never happen in future. Most of the R&D center just improves the product to the next level. For example Intel Processor is always a processor and it is not an innovation to just increase the speed and decrease the size of the processor. The main technology behind it stays same.
Look on Automobile industry; nothing had changed from last 100 years. Around 100 years before you had a car with 4 wheels, one staring, few gears, 2 or 4 door on the side and today you have the same just the speed and comfort changed.
For innovation; out of box thinking is required which could not grow in the legacy form of top down management of business. An innovator can not be judged on his capability to innovate some thing in a specific time period.
I think two things need to be changed to have innovative business. First the company structures should change from top down management to flat structure. Second is to create pool of intelligent people without giving them any target to achieve. Of course an R&D center will be still required to improve the innovation.

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