[ih] Review: Yasha Levine's "Surveillance Valley"

[Richard Bennett]

Here’s a good overview on economic theory about innovation: https://www.cairn.info/revue-journal-of-innovation-economics-2014-2-page-41.htm <https://www.cairn.info/revue-journal-of-innovation-economics-2014-2-page-41.htm>

It’s a broad and deep field. I tend to ignore mass-market books that purport to provide very simple accounts of fast fields of endeavor. It’s my experience that reading Clay Christenson, Jared Diamond, or Nassim Taleb leaves the reader less well informed than [sh]he was before opening the book.

> On Jul 3, 2018, at 9:19 PM, Craig Partridge <craig at tereschau.net> wrote:
> 
> Got a citation about big companies -- most work I've seen (e.g. the Innovator's Dilemma) suggests the reverse.
> 
> Certainly what I've seen is that big companies specialize in squashing innovation.  Most inventive folks I know have a horror story or two or three or four.
> 
> Craig
> 
> On Tue, Jul 3, 2018 at 8:38 PM, Richard Bennett <richard at bennett.com <mailto:richard at bennett.com>> wrote:
> The research on innovation very clearly shows that significant, game changing inventions almost always come from big companies. The myth of two dudes in a garage ignores the fact that it takes big money to take big risks. 
> 
> Apple succeeded with the iPhone while Handspring and Nokia failed in large part because of the music infrastructure the company had built around the iPod, another second or third mover that succeeded where more ad hoc MP3 players had failed.
> 
>> On Jul 3, 2018, at 6:39 PM, Dave Crocker <dhc2 at dcrocker.net <mailto:dhc2 at dcrocker.net>> wrote:
>> 
>> On 7/2/2018 10:05 AM, Andrew G. Malis wrote:
>>> don’t know, I would count the iPhone as a “big invention”. It completely 
>>> changed mobile telephony and created the entire app market.
>> 
>> 
>> The iPhone popularized a concept but was arguably not first-mover to it.
>> 
>> I'm not sure whether this is entirely accurate, by my own experience 
>> would give Handspring the credit for hitting the milestone, and General 
>> Magic for establishing the target (with Newton being an odd form of 
>> take-back by Apple, since GM was a spinoff.)
>> 
>> The point is that for both examples, it took companies that were not 
>> embedded in the main corporate culture (as indeed PARC was not).
>> 
>> The momentum, immediacy and encrusted bureaucracy of essentially all 
>> larger companies makes it exceedingly difficult for any of them to 
>> start, nurture and protect a serious innovation environment.
>> 
>> While there are exceptions sprinkled over time, they are only that.
>> 
>> d/
>> 
>> 
>> -- 
>> Dave Crocker
>> Brandenburg InternetWorking
>> bbiw.net <http://bbiw.net/>
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> 
> —
> Richard Bennett
> High Tech Forum <http://hightechforum.org/> Founder
> Ethernet & Wi-Fi standards co-creator
> 
> Internet Policy Consultant
> 
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—
Richard Bennett
High Tech Forum <http://hightechforum.org/> Founder
Ethernet & Wi-Fi standards co-creator

Internet Policy Consultant

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