Secret to innovation success = keep senior management away from the ideas | Hacker News Reader

Secret to innovation success = keep senior management away from the ideas

en-us.nielsen.com

37 pointsbhc311 comments

Hardly a secret!

Edit I’m not going to dignify the Apple jibe with a response (Apple is one in a million). But who hasn’t worked at a company where the guys on top seem resolutely determined to meddle for the sake of meddling or are so clueless that they sink the company? The VPs of a tech start-up I used to work for were so in love with themselves that they ignored the advice of everyone else, including me, a lowly junior developer, and continued using a fly as a mascot and the tagline "Your place to sell out" until they filed for bankruptcy.

I heard of a VP of a pro audio equipment company who was on a quest to eliminate red LEDs from the front panels of all audio equipment (red LEDs are a de facto standard to indicate a clipping or error condition). Last I heard, he's no longer employed there.

Explain Apple then.

Apple Inc. (previously Apple Computer, Inc.) is an American multinational corporation that designs and markets consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers. The company's best-known hardware products include the Macintosh computers, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad. Apple software includes the Mac OS X operating system; the iTunes media browser; the iLife suite of multimedia and creativity software; the iWork suite of productivity software; Aperture, a professional photography package; Final Cut Studio, a suite of professional audio and film-industry software products; and Logic Studio, a suite of audio tools. As of January 2010, the company operates 284 retail stores in ten countries, and an online store where hardware and software products are sold.

Reminds me of the "Blessing for the Czar" from Fiddler on the Roof - "May the Lord bless and keep the executives... far away from us!"

How are they establishing causation?

...unless the boss is a Jobs or Gates who intimately understands the market and/or technology.

True, but they are also statical outliers - most big bosses don't understand the market or the tech.

And even then I wonder: what would Microsoft be if Bill had understod the internet? He blew the company on that one. Might somebody who would not have been so high up in the hierarchy see that one comming?

I think the blame for that lies more on Ballmer than on Gates, but the point still holds.

Microsoft could take a lesson from its own games division, though. It largely ignores them -- and they're largely successful and creative. :)

Right...there are those guys.

They talk about 2 or 3 "gating" processes where a decision is made to go from idea to prototype or from prototype to production. I'm sure that Jobs/Gates don't get involved until you start hitting the prototype stage.

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