February 4, 2016 at 6:45 pm
It's a lot easier to be a scrappy startup that is willing to do anything and everything to disrupt the market. It's not so easy to do the same as a well established corporation with a proven profit model that, "Hey, can I waste 5 million dollars trying this out?"
There is no shortage of innovative people out there. There is just a shortage of resources that innovative people need to innovate. Give me 100 million dollars, I'm sure I will make the next best online video game that will melt faces.
February 5, 2016 at 7:03 am
TomThomson (2/4/2016)
mjh 45389 (2/4/2016)
The problem I see is empowering and trusting people. Over the last 30 years I have worked for companies ranging in size from 5 to 4000 people in one location. As management layers were stripped over the years the incompetence of many managers was highlighted more and micro-management became a (near) norm. The worst situation was about a decade ago when any request to spend money was checked in the minutest detail. In one case after the MD got involved a few £100 were saved. The ensuing issues cost the company 30 - 100 times the amount saved.Moving decisions up the management degree to a level where the decision maker is someone with no competence in the field affected by the decision is far too common; and it's even worse when the deciding manager is one of those all too common MBAs who thinks his or her MBA qualification means he has a better understanding if the issues than the enfgneer of scientist who is telling him his answer is going to be an extrelmely expensive utter disaster.
I don't recall seeing that happen before about the mid 90s - - is it something that has really got wose over the years?
Yes it has definitely got worse! Both MBA and Prince 2 are held in low regard by my colleges and myself. The problem is that neither mean any understanding or common sense about what they are managing. I have been at a meeting where the (Prince II) project manager had the software being delivered and installed on the hardware six weeks before hardware delivery - he got quite upset when this was pointed out. On one long train journey I was talking with a quantity surveyor who had been replaced by a young MBA (he was about 55 at the time) and watched the infrastructure project overrun massively. What the MBA had bot appreciated was to pour all the concrete on site it had to be delivered first! Disregard experience at your peril!
February 5, 2016 at 7:39 am
TomThomson (2/4/2016)
Eric M Russell (2/4/2016)
Some good ideas (like open source software, open IT floor plans, and telecommuting) come out of startups and are adopted by the larger corporate establishment. However, much of the "big picture" and "radical change" concepts have proven not to pan out from a business perspective. There probably have been more failed startups than have been good practical ideas coming out of startups.A few misconceptins there, I think.
Telecommuting came out of fairly big established companies, not startups. ICL (with 20,000 employees worldwide at the time, so hardly a startup) for example, had people telecommuting in the late 60s and early 70s
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Open IT floor plans came out of people without a clue how to get productive behaviour from employees, one of the worst mistakes ever made by industry. It is still reducing productivity in most software companies, because
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As for open source software, I worked on the UK's Alvey Flagship project as the project's software architect (my colleague Brian Procter was the chief system architect, and my boss Colin skelton was the project manager) back in the late 80s.
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- are you going to tell me IBM was a startup in 1968?
Actually it was the Greeks or Chinese who invented remote office commuting through the use of carrier pigeons, perhaps as early as 2,000 B.C.
Also, one could argue that the ancient Egyptions or Sumerians invented the open IT office design.
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho
February 12, 2016 at 5:12 am
There will always be a need for some grunt style work (though maybe less in technology).
I see plenty of grunt work which some love and others see as being blockers to their creativity and innovation that could be productivity boosts for their companies. I tend to agree with both sets of people for them i.e. their opinion usually highlights what they should be doing.
Gaz
-- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!
March 8, 2016 at 4:27 pm
I hope to be long retired by then.
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