When The New Polymath came out, I took heat for being nice to an innovation group at BP. It had nothing to do with the Gulf spill, but people would have preferred I paint BP as a villain.
With my next book, as I excerpt on my other blog, I have had a couple of people suggest I drop HP because of its turmoil this summer. Others think Boeing does not deserve the ink for its 787 program because the plane is 3 years late. Someone even suggested Corning did not deserve to be in it because Gorilla Glass will not cross $ 1 bn in revenues this year,
Guess what? They all stay in the book along with Apple, Google, Facebook and others who are faring better in popularity polls. In different ways, the less popular ones show how what I call the technology elite are coping with complex scenarios – and yes, even adversity.
Too many of us expect pristine examples. Look at the heat Oracle is taking for missing its quarter today. No one is perfect. You want proof? Read Walter Isaacson’s bio of Steve Jobs.
BTW, I wanted to profile Oracle in the book. Their integration of countless acquisitions would have made a nice example of a technology elite company, but I could not get PR signoff. And yes, if they had been in the book, a missed quarter would not have made me drop them from it.
