Don’t Innovate Like a Startup

Interesting read. I partly agree. That part is that coporates are different than startups and thus can (and perhaps should) innovate in a different way. While you start off saying coporates should not innovate like startups, in the end you actually argue they should but just a hundred fold. Sélim makes a good point about this exact issue; it is not about copying the startup. It is about being flexible; or agile if you will. What we see in our customer base is that corporations are starting to look for more flexible solutions. While this is mostly still at the operational level, ultimately this will result in strategic agility: the ability of a company to be flexible in its strategy. There are great examples of this such as Philips. It started out as a light bulb factory, turned itself into a consumer goods manufacturer and are now transforming into a mostly personal healthcare manufacturer. There are similar examples of companies in many countries that have strategically reinvented themselves. Microsoft is doing it right now too for example. The big advantage of corporates is that they have time and money. They should leverage that advantage instead of copying startups, if you ask me.

Thank you, Sélim, Your arguments are spot on! The point of the article is not to make corporates investors, they are already, but to make them think as investors even for the internal projects. "If you have a cool internal project, start two more and invest in a startup with a similar solution. " To encourage not only the experimentation but also the competition of ideas. Most of the companies pick one technology for an innovation project and stick to it even if it is not the best fit. It then becomes the PM's territory (.."because my project was approved"...) and no one is allowed to ever experiment in this field. Instead of this, once the goal is clear there should be several approaches to reach it. They should be developed in parallel and gradually converged to the optimal solution. This approach is referred as Set-Based Concurrent Engineering - https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/toyotas-principles-of-setbased-concurrent-engineering/ Thank you again, Stefan

Stefan, I believe you have risen an interesting point and you are touching on a critical topic governing the future of big corporations. As I am a founder, I would like to add some of my thoughts on this subject. Corporates obviously understand that the introduction of new technology has a strong chance to disrupt their existing market. The odds correlate well with how well-established channels tend to be, or how extensive capital equipment/investments are. The speed at which new technological solutions come up that have the potential to disrupt markets is ever increasing thanks to the positive feedback loop of platforms. It took Satoshi's brethren about five years to make some forward thinking banks a little nervous. It took Mr. Buterin about 1.5 years to get the full attention of the banking industry. The beauty - every new technological revolution brings new platforms that enable even faster development of solutions to current problems. What can and should big corporates do? Here I will take a contrarian view point to yours, Stefan. However, I need to say that I did never work in big corps - I am a founder and have always sat on the other side of the table. First off, I agree with you that big corps have to understand what side of the table they are sitting at. You argue it to be the investor's side, and there is some merit to this view. If you are not Amazon, Google or Facebook, you might struggle to create to innovative power to reach new niches. So establishing Outposts in technological epicenters, investing in early-stage disrupters or flat out buying disrupters seems like a good solution. Swisscom is doing an excellent job at it - to give you guys the credit you deserve. However, I argue this is a short term way to look at it the problem. I believe the key is building a company which is focused on learning as quickly as possible. A company should be a fluid entity that can learn and incorporate these learnings on a continuous basis. I am not suggesting to set up internal company pods of innovation - even though it might be a great start (Switzerland's "Post" seems to proof it), it goes further than that. Companies need to create an internal innovation culture that permeates all levels of the organization. Every employee should feel empowered to run experiments. Putting the power in people's hands to try out different things will lead to unstoppable progress. My point is: Greatness is built from within - not by simply patching together outsiders. Frankenstein might have been a gentle beast - but he was flawed. This view on the solution takes the more difficult approach. However, I just don't see how fueling the product/market pipeline with outside forces will yield the stronger company in the longer term. Culture always wins over mere trends.

awesome!