Samira wrote:
In some ways yes, in some ways not. Certainly I agree that smaller companies tend to specialize, and therefore the range of innovations is limited. Larger companies typically have more money to spend on R&D.
They also have, or tend to have, huge bureaucratic processes in place that can actually impeded innovation and development if they're not managed correctly.
Once you get past that point, though, and an idea gets into development they have a clear advantage.
Absolutely. The tricky stage is always navigating a course between "we've got a neat idea" and "we've got a neat product to sell". And the process of a larger corporation buying up the smaller company with the idea/patent in order to bring that idea to market can slow things down. However, you also have to compare that to the rate of success bringing a product to market yourself. One of the hardest things for a business to do is shift from being investment driven to being product driven. It kills more innovative ideas than you might think.
While I don't have any hard numbers handy, my gut from seeing the process myself and working with people who've seen even more of this, is that more innovations ultimately get to market faster via the feeder system than if each individual business attempted to bring stuff to market on their own. You simply would not believe the number of engineers I know who have worked on some really really really neato technology that worked just fine, but failed because the owners of the small company that came up with it had no clue how to make it a marketable product.
Heck. I know a lot of guys who worked for small companies where the owners didn't want to market the product. There's nothing more frustrating than being an engineer, building something really really cool, but working for a couple of guys who are more interested in milking the investors of money for as long as possible, then going bankrupt and doing it over again than taking the risk of attempting to bring said cool thing to market. The ideal vision we often have of small innovative businesses fighting against the "big corporate machine" to try to bring innovative products to market on their own terms is somewhat of a myth. While there are certainly examples of unfair practices used to pressure those guys to sell their ideas to the big guys, there are just as many (but often not heard outside the industry) of the little guy ******** things up so bad that said neato product takes 20 years longer to reach the market than it should.
Edited, Aug 23rd 2010 2:28pm by gbaji