[GTALUG] OT: How Superstar Companies Like Apple Are Killing America’s High-Tech Future

[R Russell Reiter]

On March 17, 2015 4:11:43 PM EDT, "D. Hugh Redelmeier" <hugh at mimosa.com> wrote:
>[Warning: long off-topic posting.]
>
>[I would welcome challenges to what I write.]
>
>| From: Ivan Avery Frey <ivan.avery.frey at gmail.com>
>
>| Might be of interest to people on this mailing list.
<snips follow>

>3. R&D needs stable employment
>==============================
>2.  What innovations matter?
>========================
  Where do the important but less spectacular innovations 
>come from?  What nurtures them?

I always think of Post It notes. The task was find a superior glue. What was discovered was a reusable tacky substance which official product development channels within 3M would not authorize.  An unofficial "bootleg" channel developed and the product eventually passed back into the corporate development stream.

I guess this was the middle management, who knew more about their staffs capacities and abilities than did the corporate bean counters who's main duties are reporting profits to the board and shareholders.

The willingness to take risks with other peoples money and the checks and balances of the enterprise constructs of risk and reward are the foundation of capitalism. Even in the early days of communism Trotsky acknowledged the need for a class of venture capitalists. He just felt the reward limits for investors be capped in favor of spreading the profits among the workers more equitably.

I always say the real rewards come from thinking outside the box. However there are real and practical circumstances where you don't let some stuff out of the box, or even open it at all.
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