“The innovation tilt toward big companies”

Steve Lohr at the NYT loves to get me going:) Last time it was about McKinsey and cloud computing.

This time his premise is larger companies “employ scientists in many disciplines (and) typically have the skills and scale to tackle (complex) projects” – ergo they have rediscovered innovation.  He also quotes Mr. Disruptive  - Clayton Christensen, author of the Innovator’s Dilemma - and other big biz school professors.

I don’t claim to know much about big companies in other verticals, but Steve uses tech vendors, IBM and Microsoft as examples in his article. The problem is Stave uses isolated parts of those vendors which are innovating to describe the whole.

The reality is the majority of IBM’s software and outsourcing revenue (i.e the majority of its revenues) comes from ancient products like Lotus and Tivoli; much of their services revenues is delivered from cold-war era bunkers called data centers and around old-in-the tooth ERP like services and BPO of tactical services like accounts payable and payroll processing . Microsoft is somewhat better on the consumer side but the majority of their enterprise revenue comes from Office and SQL Server and Dynamics – legacy products. 

We need divine help if all that is defined as “innovation”

Clayton’s quote to him has a big qualifier “once (big companies) recognize the benefits of disruptive thinking”…

See how Microsoft and SAP are responding to SaaS. See how Oracle is dealing with third party maintenance. See how IBM and HP/EDS and EMC are responding to clouds. See how Verizon and AT&T are dealing with VoIP.

Hmm, you really think these big tech companies have discovered  “the benefits of disruptive thinking”?