Parc Fires Back at New Yorker, Claims Gladwell Misses How Innovation Works
xconomy.com
xconomy.com
For myself, this is part of why I'm not a big Malcolm Gladwell fan. Whether it's his articles, his TED talks, or his books, I always feel like he's abusing data rather than using data. It's like he flings a bunch of factual snippets at the reader and then quickly segues into his conclusion like a magician performing sleight of hand. There's no logical argument, just here's some stuff and therefore the end. He's a great historian and storyteller; I just could go without his analysis sometimes.
You can't write best selling books that read like a paper in a scientific journal. He presents interesting and thought provoking arguments with enough data that you can't immediately disregard them. If afterwards you feel compelled to dig deeper, I say it's a job well done.
To go in hand with the "abuse of data" as you wrote above, very few things are truly objective (even axioms are widely-held beliefs), and part of my problem with Malcolm is this "abuse of data." He doesn't inject enough of himself to support this academic feel.
It sees this as a good thing? I mean, say what you will, but most of modern personal computing came from PARC. I don't think PARC's problem was lack of innovation. Rather, it was short-sighted decisions made by Xerox execs who were scared of PARC's idea of a paper-free office (Xerox of course making most of its money off of paper).
The way the terms are used in the article, I think you mean, "lack of invention."
Both of you are in agreement that PARC of old was great at invention (building new things), not so good at innovation (bringing ideas to market). PARC now claims they're better at innovation. The external consensus is that they're not nearly as good at invention as they used to be. I'm not holding my breath to see what they come up with.