> But instead of stepping up to the plate and igniting a Red Queen's Race that would have benefited everyone, INTC first tried to discredit the technology repeatedly, then they built an absolutely dreadful series of decelerators that demonstrated how badly they didn't understand manycore. Eventually, they gave up, and now they're playing catch-up by buying companies that get within striking distance of NVDA rather than building really cool technology from within.
Reminds me of "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win".
So many companies have this reaction (e.g. RIM with BlackBerry). Wondering if this is some kind of "corporate instinct".
This is "The innovator's dilemma" material. TL.DR. yes, it's a perfectly rational (but short term biased) reaction that corporations mostly can not resist having.
A corporation (the management, that is) also act this way because they know their maneuverability is just about the same as that of the Titanic. So while they (maybe) prepare a response knowing full well they're already late too the party they try to discredit the startup hoping it will at the very least slow it down.
Corporations can't really be as successful at innovating as a startup. A startup is free to build or reshape itself into anything, focus on a single thing, and pivot on a dime. In a corporation the same structures that hold it up and moving are the ones that resist it changing direction or promoting something new. Easy to lose focus and get lost in the red tape.
And that's before you consider the risk a CEO sees in potentially cannibalizing their own (currently successful) business or just throwing money down the drain at 98 losing ideas. Like you said, 2% of ideas may be successful so a corporation would rather let the startup play it out and then buy it if it has potential. Easier to justify to investors.
So corporations innovate when they have nothing to lose and any risk is worth taking. See MS trying to somewhat successfully reinventing themselves after seeing mobile and FOSS booming. Private companies also have an easier time innovating because they have no investor pressure. They may be behemoths but at least they can avoid suffering from the "too many cooks in the kitchen" syndrome.
>because they know their maneuverability is just about the same as that of the Titanic.
I know this to be true, however I cannot understand for the life of me why this is the case.
If I was the CEO or CTO and had, say, 5k people under me, you had better believe there would be dozens of little 3-4 person teams doing hard research on threats and coming up with recommendations to get in front of them.
I mean this is basic 1st year MBA SWOT Analysis stuff.
From what I've read above 150 people [0] things start to break down a bit. Social relationships and coordination break down. You no longer know everybody, decisions aren't based on trust anymore, you cannot maintain a flat hierarchy, etc. The structures that support the "behemoth" with tens of thousands of employees spread across the world make it more rigid. With hundreds of teams, products, services, and managers office politics becomes a very real thing and people start having their own plans and ambitions. People stop pulling together towards the single goal because there is no single goal anymore.
And having lots of teams "innovating" is also not that great. You'll just end up with a stack of 100 great ideas on your desk but only 2 that might make money. Your job is to guess which 2. Any decision you take will be heavily scrutinized by everyone in the company and shareholders. You may just go the safe way, that worked over the past few years and put a bonus on the table.
A 10-20-100 person startup with everybody in the same office and a very flat structure will be a lot more agile. The people are all there for that one single purpose, and the dynamic is quite different. Once the goal is reached many just move on. This provides a very different motivation vs. the typical corporate employee.
Even if you know what is coming, that doesn't guarantee you can outmaneuver it. When you are dealing with thousands of people, contracts with hundreds to tens of thousand of customers, and infrastructure based on the assumptions that make your existing business tick, a fundamental change that costs a new competitor $0 to make because they don't have any of that built up stuff could costs a fortune for you to counter.
holding the place of an incumbent has advantages and disadvantages. Sometimes you can't leverage the advantages, and that's when a company can get buried by the upstart the worst.
But all it takes is a 1/50 shot to sink your business or overlook a key feature. That's why it's a real thing, and a 98% success rate is not very good at all.
Reminds me of "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win".
So many companies have this reaction (e.g. RIM with BlackBerry). Wondering if this is some kind of "corporate instinct".