Corporate Antibodies Against Innovation – Horace Dediu

Think of the company as an organism. Inside this organism there are entities – be they people, budgets, processes, or rules in binders. These are things that are designed to eat up innovation. To eat up changes to the core business. Companies do this not because they are stupid, but because they see this newcomer, this entrant, as a pathogen. It is seen as something that’s damaging the organism. So they act, and sometimes even collude, to destroy it. They are paid good money to do that. Their incentives are all very clear and they go to their boss every year and get a raise because they’ve been successful. You have to understand that no matter how much someone, even the CEO, has a vision, if the organization underneath has not been properly incentivized to absorb the change, it’s almost impossible to build that kind of structure. It’s schizophrenic to accept this intruder that’s trying to take away your core business.