Startups a Safer Bet Than Behemoths 378
Former Slashdot editor ScuttleMonkey raises his voice from the great beyond to say that "TechCrunch's Vivek Wadhwa has a great article that takes a look at difference between startups and 'established' tech companies and what they each mean to the economy and innovation in general. Wadhwa examines statistics surrounding job creation and innovation and while big companies may acquire startups and prove out the business model, the risk and true innovations seems to be living at the startup level almost exclusively. 'Now let's talk about innovation. Apple is the poster child for tech innovation; it releases one groundbreaking product after another. But let's get beyond Apple. I challenge you to name another tech company that innovates like Apple—with game-changing technologies like the iPod, iTunes, iPhone, and iPad. Google certainly doesn't fit the bill—after its original search engine and ad platform, it hasn't invented anything earth shattering. Yes, Google did develop a nice email system and some mapping software, but these were incremental innovations. For that matter, what earth-shattering products have IBM, HP, Microsoft, Oracle, or Cisco produced in recent times? These companies constantly acquire startups and take advantage of their own size and distribution channels to scale up the innovations they have purchased.'"
Apple and the others... (Score:5, Insightful)
They don't innovate. They scrape the internet looking for ideas, making products that are "just different enough" to avoid existing patents, and they buy up startup companies just as you describe. Just because Apple has better press management skills doesn't mean they don't have similar business practices. Apple is not an exception -- stop dodging this just to please the fanboys.
Re:Apple and the others... (Score:4, Informative)
I think Apple are paying for this never ending hype BS. That have a massive cult like following. I've seen Apple product since the IIe and they have not come up with anything I hadn't been able to buy before they released their version. These examples are dumb: iPod, late to the game mp3 player, didn't take off until they stopped their fixation for proprietary codecs. iTunes - appalling front end for a web-store and cruddy media management. iPhone, very late to smartphones, front end copied from N710 free media player. App store a blatent ripoff of what linux users had a decade before and pay-apps in the infamous Lindows. iPad? Eh, slates have been around for a very long time. They're all still shit at consumer level, but will likely hit the spot within the next two years, for all platforms (well, maybe not windows).
Re:Apple and the others... (Score:5, Insightful)
That have a massive cult like following. App store a blatent ripoff of what linux users had a decade before
Hmm...This cult thing seems to be contagious.
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Why would they want to innovate? (Score:5, Interesting)
Real innovation means that their existing products no longer sell because everyone buys the innovative product.
So why would an established company scrap their existing investment?
What they want is something new enough to be interesting ... but not different enough to threaten their cash cows ... that supplements their existing product line.
Apple is great at that. Look at the iPhone. New iterations of their existing product that never threatens their laptop / desktop computer segment. But can supplement it and works well with it.
It is only the startups that don't have an existing investment to threaten that will take the real risks.
Which is why software patents are bad. They allow the existing companies to sue the startups and limit the innovation.
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Software patents aren't bad. Software patents in the hands of mega-corporations and patent trolls are bad.
I'm fully convinced that the following patent rules would fix the process:
Re:Why would they want to innovate? (Score:4, Insightful)
Your idea is not that bad.
I see a problem with it, maybe you come up with a great idea, build a product for big business and patent the idea (I know ideas should not be patentable, but that's what software patents are). You can choose to license it at a thousand dollars per processor, and it would be OK in a financial sense.
I come up with the same idea, but for consumer products. It's good, maybe some multitasking improvement, but not worth your thousand dollars per processor.
You stop me from innovating, period.
Here's a better idea: no patents. I don't see any downside.
Re:Why would they want to innovate? (Score:4, Insightful)
Here's the downside: suppose you own a small business that has created a remarkable new widget. People like your widget, and you are happy to sell them widgets for a small profit. However, a very large company reverse engineers your widget, and sells it for less. Suddenly, you can't make any money any longer. If you know that anything you invent can be copied by someone else, why bother inventing anything at all? Patents are meant to spur innovation by providing inventors an opportunity to make a profit from their innovations for a limited period of time without competition.
Is the patent system perfect? No. But the solution is not to entirely eliminate it.
Or even a big comapny (Score:4, Insightful)
So suppose a company wants to do something about energy efficiency. They invest $10 billion dollars in R&D, and invent an amazing new room temperature superconductor. It works without caveats, it is just a wire that can pass a near infinite amount of current. The process for making it isn't that complex, so it doesn't cost all that much. So they can make it for $0.50/meter. They add $0.50 more to recoup their R&D and it sells for $2/meter to the end user.
Ok but now say there's no patents, so anyone can do it. they look and say "Oh that's not hard to do," and start making the wire. It also costs them $0.50/meter to make. However they've no R&D to recover, so they can get it on the market at $1/meter. Now the original company is fucked, they can't compete on the lower price, they've got $10 billion in R&D to recover. They lose a massive amount because they were the ones willing to take the risk and initiative to develop something new.
While it may be easy to say "Well screw them, we take it for the betterment of the world," consider the real result is that the first company would just never invest the dollars in R&D in the first place. If they know that the invention would just be taken, why bother? Instead they concentrate on just making things with existing technologies. Maybe do a bit of cheap development, but mostly you want to just produce, since creating just means you get it taken away.
So long as the economy is fundamentally a capitalism, which it is in every free country, then you have to have something to help protect inventors. Not saying the US system is the way to do it, but you can't just have it where inventions are free for the taking.
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suppose you own a small business that has created a remarkable new widget.
Also, assuming you managed to sidestep any existing patents already covering creating widgets;
http://www.google.com/patents?q=widget&btnG=Search+Patents [google.com]
Notable examples are;
Widget Styling and Customization - http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=DpW_AAAAEBAJ&dq=widget [google.com]
Widget Databases - http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=aLGgAAAAEBAJ&dq=widget [google.com]
Self-adapting Widgets - http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=3O-aAAAAEBAJ&dq=widget [google.com]
Synchronizing Widgets - http://www.google.com/patents/about?id [google.com]
explorers, pioneers, settlers (Score:5, Insightful)
Explorers discover or invent things. Pioneers are early adopter to integrate and make useful these inventions. Settlers reap and create a bussiness ecosystem around the places proven by pioneers. Apple has mainly been a pioneer, and microsoft a settler. Apple did not invent the GUI or Dynamic Memory, or Switching power supplies, or Post script or the Mouse. But they did pioneer the use of those technologies. Microsoft and dell/compaq settled those. They did not invent or truly pioneer MP3 players but they did advance that sufficiently to call it their own and then they settled it. Apple did not invent unix, but they did pioneer moving it from the etherial workstation market to the consumer market and now they have settled unix in the consumer market.
Other than their pioneering in search, Google is purely a settler in every market they occupy. Unix on devices, e-mail, documnet process, thin clients (aka "the cloud"). If you want to call google a pioneer then you have to think of it as a meta-pioneer: integration is really what they are about. But That is almost the definition of settling.
Microsoft did pioneering work in a few areas such as windows GUI on embedded devices. You might say that was apple or palm however.
Apple to it's credit actually does a lot of exploration you don't ever hear about. ARM processors? Power-PC processors? Firewire? Conformal Batteries? But they don't really play that angle up a lot. Lately I've been really impressed with microsoft's investment in the visualization field so maybe they are starting to innovate again.
I also suspect that Microsoft has a shot at becoming a settler in the "cloud" field. THeir new Azure technology seems to be just what bussinesses of many different sizes are going to need to go to managed IT.
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My work gave everyone a free copy of that book. I guess someone out there read it.
Re:explorers, pioneers, settlers (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple's approach seems more gentrification than pioneering.
There were smart phones before iPhones. There were laptops before macbooks. There were all-in-one computers before iMacs. There were personal computers before the Macintosh or even the Apple II.
It seems like they are best at moving into a neighborhood that is already occupied by the cool people (experimenters, hobbyists, tech geeks, etc) and dressing the place up in aluminum and glass and then driving the rents through the roof. Then, all the cool people have to move out because it's too expensive and the stylish yuppies moves in. That's gentrification and I think it's a pretty good metaphor for Apple's approach to the consumer tech business.
"Pioneer"? No.
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Google "Altair 8800". Very nice, influential box.
Re:Apple and the others... (Score:4, Insightful)
Is it me, or is the Apple/Google comparison a touch off topic? Sure, they are both popular, but get to the point about the STARTUPS! Hell, I'd even request a comparison to a large company that isn't those two giants.
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The iPod was game changing at the time. Apple got an exclusive agreement to use the 1.8" drives for about a year - no other players at the time could store a sizeable fraction of your music collection (5GB!) in something small enough to fit into a pocket. You had Flash players that had space for one or two albums, or players that used the bigger 2.5" drives and didn't fit into a pocket.
Google Maps didn't do much that mapquest and others weren't already doing. And their mapping data is so full of error
Re:Apple and the others... (Score:5, Insightful)
Thats not innovative or game changing, thanks dirty dealing. Locking up a tech so no one else can use it.
Re:Apple and the others... (Score:4, Insightful)
The iPod was game changing at the time. Apple got an exclusive agreement to use the 1.8" drives for about a year - no other players at the time could store a sizeable fraction of your music collection (5GB!) in something small enough to fit into a pocket. You had Flash players that had space for one or two albums, or players that used the bigger 2.5" drives and didn't fit into a pocket.
"Holds more stuff" isn't game-changing. Unless you think that every subsequent iPod was also "game changing" because it held more stuff ?
Heck, even the very first mp3 player (whatever it might have been) wasn't "game changing" in any meaningful sense of the word - it was just doing the same thing Sony (and others) had been doing beforehand with their Walkman products, ONLY WITH MP3s. [tvtropes.org]
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They scrape the internet looking for ideas, making products that are "just different enough" to avoid existing patents, and they buy up startup companies just as you describe.
So?
Startups may have great ideas, but they typically lack any experience in industrial design, design for manufacturing, project management, manufacturing, distribution, law (especially customs and import law), marketing, retail distribution management, and customer support.
A brilliant idea is a wonderful thing, but that's only one tin
No kidding (Score:4, Insightful)
You know it is BS when they trot out the iPhone. Please explain to me how the iPhone is at all innovative. It is a touchscreen smartphone. Not only had I seen those before, I'd seen lots of them. The smartphone market was well established when Apple came in. They may have done theirs better than some others, they may have presented it in a package more attractive to consumers but those are not innovations, those are good design and marketing.
An innovative product is something that is new and different. It is something that people didn't think about before but now go "Oooo, I see a use for that." For example the microwave was an innovative product. It cooked food in a completely different way, using a different technology.
Apple hasn't been in to innovation much at all these days, but the iPhone is the worst example of all. It is their least innovative product, and an example of them going in to a well established market. None of that means it isn't a good product, or a popular one, but you need to separate those from innovative. After all, LCD TVs are an incredibly popular product these days, but certainly aren't innovative, we've had LCDs around for decades.
Unfortunately I think too many Apple fans drink the marketing kool-aid and think that everything Apple does is "innovative". They feel like that matters, for some reason, that somehow it isn't ok to but a product just because it is good and you like it.
Oh puh-leeze. (Score:3, Insightful)
"Well established"? Smartphones were a niche market before the iPhone, and only exploded in popularity (and continue to grow dramatically) after the iPhone was introduced in 2007. Windows Mobile was far and away the largest smartphone platform; where i
Re:Oh puh-leeze. (Score:4, Interesting)
Ya the iPhone fans love to forget about Blackberry. Comparisons are always "The iPhone shipped more than any single Android phone producer!" and so on. The Blackbeery is just not mentioned. RIM has long been top of the smartphone market, though unlike what the GP tried to imply, it was not niche.
Also there's Symbian. People forget that while many Symbian phones might not be "proper" smartphones in every sense of the word, they are effectively smartphones and foten sold as such. Take something like the Nokia E70. Like many Nokia phones doesn't get the kind of hype in the US as some others but it sold well here and abroad and it is a smartphone in every way that matters.
I think part of the problem is that many Apple fans seem to be unaware of something until Apple does it. When people are doing it before, they don't pay any attention. So when Apple does it, that is the first they notice it. Then everything that comes after Apple is trying to "copy Apple" in their minds. Often it turns out that's not at all the case.
The iPad is another example. Tablets have been around for a long time. We have some old ass tablet PCs at work that now hang on the wall and show MRTG and Nagios because they aren't useful for much else. They just never caught on. The iPad seems to be catching on better, and perhaps so will other new tablets. However it isn't an innovative idea, it is just perhaps an idea that now the technology exists to make work well, and make it worthwhile.
That isn't to knock devices that are successful and just evolutions/iterations of what is already there. Most consumer devices are. I'm quite happy with my HDTV and there is nothing at all innovative about it. It is just a good collection of technologies, some of them quite old, that does what I want for a good price. It needn't be innovate, just quality. However fanboys, in particular Apple fanboys, seem to have this need to convince themselves that the products they use are new to the world.
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Windows Mobile was on the market for how long? Why the fuck did it take so long to get a decent phone interface? You can bitc
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It really depresses me that Apple user interfaces are perceived as good. I've given up filing user interface bugs with Apple now - they've only fixed half of the ones that I filed on the third generation iPod back in 2004/5. Any new Apple product has so many user interface defects that anyone with the slightest clue about HCI can easily draw up a long list of things that are wrong with it.
Apple's only redeeming feature is that the competition is a lot worse. Somehow though, 'Apple: We suck less than eve
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Isn't that what innovation is? You take an existing idea, see how it falls short with regards to demand and functionality, and improve upon it. Voila! Innovation! Often, this innovation is simply taking a smattering of smaller, disassociated innovations and turning it into a Finished Product.
Seriously, though. This article is a bunch of nonsense. Not only was I able to think of innovation within several large tech corporations, but I was able to think of some within their "do not innovate" list:
* Intel and
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Also, the article has a wrong premise: Apple is not a software company !!!
How can you compare Apple and Google ?
Apple is entirely about hardware and PR (and they don't care about the software).
Google is entirely about software and bandwidth.
I have the feeling that Steve Jobs doesn't respect developers, but instead hardware designers.
Re:Apple and the others... (Score:5, Interesting)
iPod: Reduce the buttons, polish the interface. Integrate seamlessly with iTunes. Made a user experience that was superior to anything else out there. Push for reasonable prices on content. Fought for and eventually won DRM free content with the publishers.
That's not Inovation, that's simple refinement. There is absolutely nothing Inovative about any Apple Products. Even the ][e wasn't inovative. It simply used existing tech in an interesting manner.
I'm sorry to say it but Apple does very little inovating of hardware. Where they tend to be very effective is seeing what the user wants and giving it to them.
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But the market seems to like Apple products pretty well
Sure. But it likes Android products more: not everyone has blinders on or is as gullible as you appear to be. So it works both ways, bucko ... not everyone wants what Apple has to offer, in my case because I don't like who I'd have to thank for it.
In terms of raw innovation Apple really is no shining star, and never has been. They're no better than Microsoft in that they take what already exists, polish it up a bit, and then market it (very well, I must admit.) Now, that's not bad: but Apple is no more a
Re:Apple and the others... (Score:4, Insightful)
Contrary to popular belief amongst Apple fans, Apple didn't invent the portable music player, didn't invent the personal computer, didn't invent the online music store, didn't invent the graphical user interface, didn't actually invent much of anything.
Where do you get the idea that it's a common belief that Apple invented these things? I don't know a single person who believes Apple invented any of those things.
Also, this comes to the crux of this (non) issue. People are confusing invention and innovation. They are not the same thing. You don't need to invent a technology to use it innovatively. Yet this is a common cry around here; "BUT APPLE DIDN'T INVENT IT!!!!!!!!" Yeah, so what? Nobody ever claimed they did.
Frankly, who gives a shit? Is it a good product? Is it something that's useful to you? Then use it. Who cares who invented it, or what its innovation coefficient is?
Tech innovator? WRONG! (Score:2, Informative)
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I think you meant well-built packages and user-friendly UIs.
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You can have them replaced by Apple.
I'm not defending — or criticizing — non-user replaceable batteries, just stating that calling them time bombs is a bit of an exaggeration.
Google vs. Apple - Bias? (Score:4, Insightful)
Agreed.
If you think that the iPad is a groundbreaking innovation and (for example) Google Docs is not, you're seriously biased. Both are "incremental innovations". Tablets have been around for a long time, and so have office suites. While Google did improve some things, like collaborative editing, Apple did just improve the UI without adding any remarkable technical features.
The term "technical" is far to often used for things that are clearly not technical (like UIs), just because they are used on electronic devices like phones and computers.
PS: I'm not a Google fanboi (i don't use it at all), I just used it as a comparison.
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http://www.amazon.com/Salton-EP1-ePods-Handheld-Computer/dp/B00004YNWY [amazon.com]
http://www.lonnypaul.com/epods-hacking-info-archive/2005/11/29/ [lonnypaul.com]
This artifact from a dot-com flameout was hacked early in the 2000's to allow web surfing and remote desktoping from the underlying MIPS Windows CE impelmentation. A handful of WiFi-b cards were supported. I had one, and everybody thought, at the time, it was really the bee's k
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Wait, so to be an innovator, you can't focus on design aesthetics, battery life, and other practical concerns? If its not bleeding edge, its not innovative?
Maybe you need to get your head out of your ass and realize that "innovation" != Ghz.
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Since Apple doesn't actually make any hardware, I'm at loss as to how anyone could call them a tech innovator.
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Except they completely change the paradigm of how people actually consume products. Apple brought MP3 players to the masses, multitouch to the masses, modern smartphones + mobile apps to the masses, etc. There are clear before and after effects. If you think innovation is purely in an algorithm, you're a moron that clearly has never tried to actually productionize anything.
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VMWare (Score:5, Informative)
"I challenge you to name another tech company that innovates like Apple--with game-changing technologies like the iPod, iTunes, iPhone, and iPad."
VMWare. It's owned 80% by EMC, which is a behomoth and totally innovation free. Yet VMWare puts out a lot of very innovative products.
Google made wave and gwt (Score:5, Informative)
Google made Wave* and GWT which are both quite innovative solutions.
*And then dropped it again.
Dismissing Google? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yep, there's also Google desktop, and Chrome. (And if you count dropped products, Wave. Although that was probably "too innovative" to be successful.)
Also, it's not like Google search was finished 5-10 years ago. Improving search (or even keeping it from deteriorating) requires tons of innovations (e.g. MapReduce). Doing anything at Google's scale makes innovation a necessity behind the scenes. They've also added new search features like Google scholar which I use a lot.
Re:Dismissing Google? (Score:5, Informative)
You're just reinforcing his point.
Google Docs was born as Writely and then bought by Google.
Google Voice was born as Grandcentral and then bought by Google.
Android was born as Android and then bought by Google in 2005 (and never mind that Intel and Nokia were experimenting with Linux-based phones too).
Google hidden and Not-so-hidden Innovation (Score:3)
Not to mention the multiple innovations in dealing with and indexing obscene amounts of data in the back end. mSQL just isn't going to cut it, you know? That's impressed me beyond words: The back end has radically changed and it just keeps working.
The redundancy and failover are stunning and I don't think you get tha
Double standard (Score:5, Insightful)
For those of you who are new to the tubes, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Nomad [wikipedia.org], http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PressPlay [wikipedia.org], http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartphone [wikipedia.org], http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tablet_pc [wikipedia.org]
Yes, Apple's products did improve upon all these ideas, but they weren't earth shattering. They just used Apple's "size and distribution channels to scale up the innovations" and bring it to the masses.
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the iPod, iTunes, iPhone and iPad were really just incremental innovations of other services and products that people were already offering?!
I'm no Apple Fanboi, but I think it's fair to track the iPod Touch, iPhone, and iPad paritally back to the Newton. Of all the really old tech, I think they resemble that more than anything else from the early 90's. Was there any other predecessor to the Newton that made it to general-consumer mass production?
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It definitely tracks back to the Newton. But it wasn't Apple innovating on it - it was ex-Apple employees at Pixo (which Apple bought, resulting in the iPod and iPhone).
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Apple innovates in design and interfaces and those things are just as important as anything else.
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And iTunes was bought too... (Score:3, Interesting)
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1. Creative Nomad (before the iPod) -- oversized, horrible interface, and a slow computer interface
No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.
The fact that you personally didn't like it doesn't mean it wasn't innovative.
2. Smartphone -- before the iPhone, which phone had a standards compliant browser and usable media software. Are you really seriously going to say that the standard Palm, BlackBerry, or WinMo device was anyhere near as usable as the iPhone in 2007?
See above. Many people liked back then, as they do now, the interface of WinMo and BlackBerry devices. I'm not one of them, but I don't consider the iPhone 'usable' either.
3. PressPlay -- subscription music, before iTunes, where could you *buy* mainstream music by the song and have unlimited rights to burn them to a CD?
Key word being "mainstream". Which doesn't denote innovation of any kind, merely better negotiation skills compared to those that *did* innovate.
Startup? (Score:2)
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IBM is a safer bet than Twitter (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm an angel investor, so I can talk fairly competently on this subject.
Let's compare a well known behemoth (IBM) with a well known start-up (Twitter).
If I invest in IBM, I'm guaranteed a healthy return. Barring any major disaster, IBM will consistently return a profit on what I invest.
If I invest in Twitter, I'm not guaranteed a healthy return. My returns may be enormously higher than investing in IBM if the company is successful, and I might lose my entire investment if the company goes bankrupt.
This actually has some real world ramifications for me. The majority of my money is stored away in Corporate Bonds for major companies, because I know that I have a very low probability of losing the money and a very high probability of seeing at least a two to three percent return on my money every year. That's what makes behemoths a safer bet than start-ups. I only give about 15% of my assets towards start-ups at any time, because for the most part, I will break even in what I invest or lose about five to six percent of my investments.
I angel invest in companies for the fun and excitement of creating something, not because I want to make money.
Re:IBM is a safer bet than Twitter (Score:5, Insightful)
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I angel invest in companies for the fun and excitement of creating something, not because I want to make money.
And this, perhaps, is why you aren't making any money at it. See, when your neck is on the line, you'll do more to perform!
I am CTO of a small, rapidly growing company experiencing at least 100% growth this year. While we did have some private cash up front, it was a fairly small amount (less than $100k), otherwise our growth has been organic. And because we all eat from whatever our company makes,
Apple? innovate? choke! (Score:2)
It's not even valid to compare the number of patents a company takes out, as a measure of it's innovative measure, since everyone is patenting everything as a marketing ploy to st
IBM??? (Score:5, Insightful)
IBM innovates more than just about anyone, but most of it is behind the scenes. How about GMR disk technology, for one? Before that, a terrabyte took up a whole room. Now it sits in your hand. Never mind a lot of memory and CPU tech. Problem with IBM is, since it's the biggest of the behemoths, it can be hard to look below the layers of marketing and management to see the cool stuff going on. The startups get a lot of press because they're trying to be seen. That raises capital. The bigger companies with established capital keep their innovations close to the vest till they're ready to exploit. That way, even if they have to share them with others, they still have a bit of a head start.
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Speak softly and carry a big stick.
That stick having a massive patent portfolio on one end, and the Nazgul on the other.
Another problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Is that innovation is often something that you can't see, because it applies to early tech. It happens behind the scenes, and you don't see the results for many years. For example is a scientist invents a process for using carbon nanotubes to produce sub 11nm processors right now, engineers won't be able to develop that in to a workable fab solution for probably a half a decade or more. Then once it is workable, it will take time to design a CPU using it, and build fabs to produce it. By the time yo have the 11nm CPU in your home, the technology is 10 years old.
Also it doesn't seem innovative on the surface. "Oh look, someone made a faster CPU, because that hasn't happened for the past 40 years." You don't see the massive innovation behind that faster CPU.
Consumer products are not on the cutting edge usually because you don't want cutting edge. The cutting edge is expensive, and riddled with problems because it is new. You want tech that has been developed and tested, that is easy and stable to use and can be purchased cheaply. Nothing at all wrong with that, it just means that you rarely see an innovative consumer device.
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This is not news to anyone in the stock market (Score:2)
Really, this is not news. Higher risk means higher expected returns, if there weren't higher expected returns, noone would invest their money into higher risk ventures. Large Cap companies widthstand widespread financial turmoil better, but Small Cap companies tend to climb out of a recession faster and have much higher growth potential. This is simple logic
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Higher risk means higher potential
returns.
FTFY. Most tech startups never make it to IPO. The assumption is that those that do make it to IPO or get sold to a large company more than make up for those that don't. That's because your downside is limited to 100% of your investment (if you are investing properly). So if 2/3rd go bust, you need 1/3 to return more than 200%. If you can only afford to invest in one pre-IPO startup, you shouldn't be investing in pre-IPO startups.
But I think this article, by concentrating on the successful startups
Incremental != None (Score:2)
Google *is* innovating. It does so in a similar way as Philip Glass music. You listen to it and you barely notice how it evolves and keep adding to the whole, but should make the effort of listening to the beginning and then the end, there is a *huge* difference between them. Google is slowly but surely changing our lives. Apple is more about blowing our mind, which honestly besides the iPhone, there is not much else that did it. Small incremental innovation is still innovation.
Innovation is more than just a pretty GUI (Score:5, Insightful)
What is Innovation? (Score:3, Interesting)
All this discussion and debate over innovation begs a question (perhaps in true Socratic style): what is innovation?
There are products being released every year that one-up their predecessors in terms of features, appeal, and usability. Is this innovation? To some extent, I would admit that it is a form of innovation; ideas are being created and (re)combined to produce new and (sometimes) wonderful things.
At the same time, it is my opinion that none of this "Apple vs Microsoft vs Google vs {fill in the blan
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What technology has been invented/produced recently (say, a decade or so) that has made such a fundamental shift as these? (Honestly, if you can think of one, please post a reply. I'd love to hear your opinion)
I think the problem with this statement is that we genuinely don't know if certain things are just a fad or if they are truly world-shifting. For example, the internet was up and running in what, the early 60's? But it wasn't really until the 90's that it grew with such wide adoption and with world-changing implications. So it would have been difficult to say in 1970 if it would revolutionary because we didn't really understand the potential and impact it would have. Same goes for the telephone, LCD pane
DUH! (Score:2)
Anybody who's worked at both ends knows this. Big companies don't do much organic growth because the small markets don't generate enough income and it's too hard to know what the big markets will be 3-5 years down the road. It's cheaper and safer just to let the market place itself out and then buy a promising company rather than invest in developing something and then probably end up buying a promising company because they have better technology or started from a somewhat different premise.
depends on what you mean by safe (Score:2)
Working for or investing in a VC company has a greater reward but also a greater risk. -I did not lose money on my BT share save scheme in one particularly good year people made $80,000k – unfortunately not me.
But I lost $1,000,000 on paper when the vc backed company I worked for in
And the surprise is...? (Score:2)
The advantage of being big is being big.If you instead spent it on 100 small new innovations with no real interdependence, you're no better off than 100 small companies. The whole value is in being able to deliver integrated total solutions the smaller competition can't, it's the only thing justifying the bureaucracy and overhead of being a big company. Mostly they compete not head-to-head but almost like a game or RISK - plenty effort being made to support the borders and juicy cash cows in the center that
Screw this guy (Score:2)
Ok, first of all, how are you going to talk about 'startups' doing all the 'innovation' then go on and on about Apple, a company that's been around since 1977? Oh, wait, I forgot. Everything before OS X 10.0 was just a dark phantasmal nightmare of beige plastic and doesn't count.
Second of all, the likes of Apple don't create core routers capable of moving 322 terabits per second [cisco.com]. They're also not creating electronic chess grand masters [ibm.com], are they? Nope. But at least they're shiny!
Disclaimer, I'm writing
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Take a look at the way the markets that those products occupy changed after their introduction - the iPod was not the first or the most feature-rich mp3 player, but it took a small, gradually growing market and bust it wide open. The iPhone did the same thing: not the first smartphone by long, long chalk, but the first one that was genuinely great to use and similarly turned the smartphone market from a niche into a huge open field that everyone wants to participate in.
They drive trends, and create markets.
Economics 101 (Score:2)
Startups exist to either (a) do something wonderful or (b) begin a process of concentrating vast wealth and material resources.
Corporations AKA "behemoths", OTOH, exist to cement and maintain a successful concentration of wealth (for the execs and shareholders, not so much the rank and file).
Why judge hardware? (Score:3, Insightful)
Challenge Accepted (Score:2)
I challenge you to name another tech company that innovates like Apple—with game-changing technologies like the iPod, iTunes, iPhone, and iPad.
GE, DuPont, Lockheed Martin, Dow Chemical, Intel, ARM Holdings...and most other large companies with big R&D budgets. All "tech" companies like Apple do is repackage technology developed and sold to them by companies like those I just listed and market them. Apple is an advertising and UI innovator. Good for them. The iPod isn't a game changing technology. It's a UI made possible by the R&D of true scientific innovators.
Google Maps is more revolutionary than the iPod (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want pound for pound revolutionary change to society, Google Maps has done way more to change our lives than the iPod, which is really just the next step on the evolutionary chain started by the Sony Walkman. Incremental, my ass. It has single-handedly democratized the way we interact with location and geographical information.
The iPhone was pretty revolutionary, though, touching off a revolution in how we integrate handheld devices into our social lives. And GMail is mostly a souped-up Hotmail that sucks slightly less.
Also, both Google and Apple began as startups with revolutionary products, and both have had hits and misses over the years.
I have no idea what the point of the original article was. None of its assertions sound remotely true.
Incremental ?? (Score:2)
While Google's myriad diverse products are either ignored for convenience or brushed off as incremental, the author doesn't seem to notice that there might be something incremental about the four Apple products he mentions. Maybe he should try putting them next to each other?
He accuses the other big companies of buying their innovations, and forgets that Apple bought the idea (and dev team) for the iPod, and bought the OS and took the browser that it need to scale the iPod up to become iPhone and iPad.
Perh
Incremental innovations? (Score:2)
with game-changing technologies like the iPod, iTunes, iPhone, and iPad.
A - nothing "game changing" about ANY of those.
MP3 players (both hardware and software) existed for years before iPod.
So did mobile phones - many of them far better and more innovative than iPhone. FFS how many generations was it before iPhone was able to use MMS and copy/paste?
And iPad is nothing more than a big iPod. Again... tablets have been around for years before that.
Yes, Google did develop a nice email system and some mapping software, but these were incremental innovations.
B - Seriously? Some mapping software?
Was there actually something like Google Maps and Google Earth before Google released those? Somet
Google did not invent Google Maps (Score:2)
Was there actually something like Google Maps and Google Earth before Google released those? Something that I'm not aware of?
Yes. Google obtained that technology by acquiring Keyhole [wikipedia.org] in 2004. Google Earth is just Keyhole rebranded. Keyhole had the zoom-in from orbit, the ability to fly over terrain, and the smooth dynamic switching to higher resolution data, just like Google Earth has now. But it was a pay product, one that cost about $79 a year. There was an NVidia promotion; a free version that
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"MP3 players (both hardware and software) existed for years before iPod."
Did you even use any of the ones that existed before the iPod?
Yes, they existed. And very emphatically yes did their UI suck. As well as their music management (or for that era I should say file/directory management).
The nomad was a fricken brick. Yes, wireless, yes more space, both physically and capacity. And once the iPod kicked the mp3 market it in the rear the nomad was rather lame.
100% Garbage (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sorry, but this is garbage.
Summary: "Apple is awesome. Everyone else sucks."
What could have been a valid point gets derailed by blatant fanboi blinders. Apple is NOT an innovative company either. It's an innovative spin doctor. They are good at convincing people they must have a trimmed down, stylized, and monetized versions of established technologies. iPod? MP3 players. iPhone? Smartphones. iPad? Tablets. iTunes? Napster.
Further, Apple is just as into buying up established tech and upstarts to inject life into its glossy image as everyone else (SoundJam MP). It even buys open source projects when parts it requires are at risk of being GPLv3'ed (CUPS). Hell, if it were not for FreeBSD's license terms, there probably wouldn't even be a OS X or iOS at all.
Putting Shinola on things is a far cry from being innovative.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Completely agreed. I really like Apple's products, but to say they're the lone innovators is complete crap. Their industrial and human/computer interface design is certainly innovative, and that's what makes their products so nice to use, but just because it's the most visible form of innovation doesn't make it the only.
I'm also incredulous at the statement that Google Maps was an incremental innovation. Surely people remember mapping websites pre-Google Maps, where you got served a basically static imag
Re:100% Garbage (Score:5, Informative)
What could have been a valid point gets derailed by blatant fanboi blinders. Apple is NOT an innovative company either. It's an innovative spin doctor. They are good at convincing people they must have a trimmed down, stylized, and monetized versions of established technologies. iPod? MP3 players. iPhone? Smartphones. iPad? Tablets. iTunes? Napster.
Apple is very good at taking technology and making it usable for the general consumer. Were you around when the iPod was launched? There were two basic classes of MP3 players. Small portable ones that could hold maybe a dozen songs and large portable CD players that could hold a thousand songs or so. If you are just looking basic functionality you could decry that the iPod wasn't innovative. Having actually used the MP3 players at the time, I can tell you what made the iPod different was that it was small and held a lot of music. The other thing I can tell you is that the UIs for other MP3 players sucked. The software for them sucked as well. As a geek, I put up with it. With Apple they actually spent time in addressing all the little things that would annoy an average consumer. Syncing is one step. MP3 ripping and encoding occurs immediately when you stick in a music CD, etc.
The same with smart phones. Yeah they've been around but they sucked well before Apple made theirs. Having one issued to me by work, I can tell you I detest using it. It's a WinMobile phone. It seems to me MS just took an OS, made it almost the same as desktop Windows, changed a mouse for a stylus and called it done. No thoughts were given about how the UI might need to be tweaked for an interface with a much smaller screen and small keyboard but no mouse. With the iPhone, Apple didn't put OS X desktop onto a phone and walk away. They actually thought about how a user might need to interact with it differently.
The same with tablets. MS has been pushing tablets for almost a decade. Like the smart phone, very little thought was given to the fact that a tablet user may need to interact differently than a desktop user. Most of the tablets I've seen were basically a full desktop PC and OS shoved into a small form factor. MS just changed the mouse for a pen. No rethinking about how touch could be used better.
Napster, really? You're going to compare a peer-to-peer filesharing system that allowed its users to illegally share copyrighted material to a centralized and legal music store.
Further, Apple is just as into buying up established tech and upstarts to inject life into its glossy image as everyone else (SoundJam MP). It even buys open source projects when parts it requires are at risk of being GPLv3'ed (CUPS). Hell, if it were not for FreeBSD's license terms, there probably wouldn't even be a OS X or iOS at all.
I don't dispute that Apple does buy other companies. However, they are very selective about what they buy. Unlike other tech companies (Time Warner buying AOL, MS buying Danger, etc.), every one of their purchases has actually led to a product or service of some sort to the company. NeXT technology became OS X. SoundJAM became iTunes. KeyGrip became Final Cut. Emagic became Logic Pro and Garage Band. Fingerworks' technology is used in both the multi-touch iPhone and the multi-touch trackpads. PA Semi is designing their mobile chips, etc.
Stability vs. radicalism (Score:2)
Large organizations are inherently hostile to radical thought and behavior which are necessary for innovation. Their best strategy is to use their endless resources to search and buy small start-ups rather than to futilely try to innovate in a self-defeating environment.
Article naive (Score:3, Informative)
It's a common observation that small companies hire more people than big ones. This is a myth. [findarticles.com] The small company jobs don't last as long. The numbers on people hired are easy to get, but the longitudinal studies which track workers over many years tell a different story. It's necessary to distinguish between career progress and churn.
Most startups fail. The median life of newly formed businesses in the US is about three years. (That's pre-recession.) Most venture-funded companies fail. (From talks I've been to by VCs, the most likely outcome is what VCs call a "zombie" - not successful enough to pay back its investors, but just barely able, after downsizing, to pay its current bills and keep operating. Many dot-coms ended up in zombie mode, limping along for years.)
There's a long-term effect that's even more troublesome. Knowledge, as an economic resource, may be mined out. The cost of obtaining new knowledge can exceed its commercial value. Big corporate R&D labs doing basic research, as GE, AT&T, Xerox, HP and IBM once did, are a thing of the past. That trend peaked in the 1950s and 1960s. Venture capital took up some of the slack, but even that is no longer working. Venture capital funds, as a class, have lost money each year since 2000. That's new; from 1970 to 2000, most VC firms were profitable.
Stupid statistic (Score:3, Informative)
I will rarely criticize anything as harshly as this, but, it has to be said: some of the analysis in this article could be used as a chapter in How to Lie with Statistics.
For example, the article cites Tim Kane's "analysis" that shows that startups were responsible for all US job creation since 1977. His proof of this is to take all the net jobs created by firms existing for one year or less and compare that to the net job creation of companies existing for more than one year.
Seriously, what kind of a piss-poor business can't manage to last a year? The least successful businesses I've ever seen, those one-off restaurants that crop up and then die, manage to last a year before their owners realize they're throwing away money. So, basically that data set lumps together a whole bunch of positive numbers in one category, and dumps all the negatives in the other.
Now, the analysis in the cited article does get more nuanced than that, and it does, eventually, explain what I just said. But, it's very, very easy to get a misleading opinion from that presentation, and the linked article seems to perpetuate that misperception.
"Tech company" a misnomer? (Score:3, Informative)
I challenge you to name another tech company that innovates like Apple—with game-changing technologies like the iPod, iTunes, iPhone, and iPad
False challenge. none of those products are game changing in and of themselves. None of the products mentioned are technical innovations, they are all copies from someone else's work. These products are are examples of terrific marketing and and understanding that modern life is becoming more about style over substance.
Apple doesn't really sell technology products, they sell a "style" and an "appearance of superiority".
Apple is very good at giving people what they want. Unfortunately it seems that people these days want selfishness and ego stroking. The very fact that they put "i" infront of all their product names demonstrates their selling of selfishness.
eg. iPod - a pod of sound designed to keep others out of your bubble and away from the "i"
-- posted from my apple iPad.
Apple Innovates? (Score:3, Informative)
Apple is the poster child for tech innovation; ... I challenge you to name another tech company that innovates like Apple ... These [other] companies constantly acquire startups and take advantage of their own size and distribution channels to scale up the innovations they have purchased.
Apple is extremely good at pretty product package and slick marketing. They're not what I'd call innovators, especially considering that in the last 22 years they've bought 29 companies [wikipedia.org] to use their technologies in Apple products.
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Exactly. I'm biased myself, as I work for one of those large, established companies. Google didn't invent search, online maps, or online ads. But Google's offerings in those areas kick the butts of the older stuff the way
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They bought a local Colorado company, Looking Glass I think their name was.
Re: Where's Scuttlemonkey? (Score:2)
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And, more to the point, where are does Slashdot post openings for editors? I've seen quite a few editors come and go over the last few years, but I've never seen a /. post saying 'we are looking for new editors; apply here!'
SkuttleMonkey is one of only two editors I've ever blocked from appearing on the front page, but if kdawson is still employed then it's unlikely that SkuttleMonkey was fired for pissing off too many readers (is kdawson also a former editor? Pleeeeeeeeeease?).
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Proof please.
Anyone who's actually done the legitimate math has found that Apple products are only a minimal amount more expensive ($100-ish) than a comparably built device from another company (they are more expensive, but minimally so). The problem is very few companies actually make devices that compare to the feature set that Apple offers by default. In order to get a comparable machine - a machine that has everything that the Apple machine offers and not just the same sized harddrive, RAM, and processor - one needs to add on numerous additional features that push the price up to a very comparable level.
But, hey, it you have proof that shows I'm wrong, feel free to post it and prove your claim. Until then, I'll just chalk your comment up to the typical anti-Apple hyperbole that is all too common lately.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Really? You think patents are a measure of innovation? The vast majority of patents issued by the USPTO would have failed the test (that it be non-obvious, novel, and unique innovation), had it even been applied (which it won't, because that would cut deep into the revenue stream).