Why Big Companies Can't Innovate

Re:Why Big Companies Can't Innovate by nickpsecurity on Monday May 16, 2016 @08:42PM (#11710645)

You beat me to the best examples. Especially GE. Anyone acting like big companies can't innovate haven't really done any research at all. I'd also cite the major defense contractors like Honeywell, SAIC, Lockheed, and Boeing. They do plenty of dumb stuff that basically generates jobs and bribes but a good chunk of their work requires smart people inventing new stuff. Maybe Siemens, too, along the same lines.

Also, thinking of the various jokes, how big is IKEA? Just their assemblies and pallets probably should be considered innovation in some way haha.

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Re:Why Big Companies Can't Innovate by eru on Monday May 16, 2016 @08:57PM (#11710692)

Or look at retail logistics and sourcing. Or big German car companies in the 90s, when they switched to common platforms that allowed more interchanging between models.

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Re:Why Big Companies Can't Innovate by nickpsecurity on Monday May 16, 2016 @10:55PM (#11711113)

Exactly. Many of those organizations were slower to innovate due to low margins or high cost. Yet, they still did innovations periodically with significant to huge impact. I like focusing on low-margin firms as they provide a nice minimum of what I think is achievable in others.

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Re:Why Big Companies Can't Innovate by eru on Tuesday May 17, 2016 @12:12AM (#11711306)

German hard-discounter Aldi is taking over the Australian retail market very slowly. They have vowed to `suck the profitability out of retail'.

They bring in long-established practices from Germany, and force the Australian retail oligopoly to wake up.

Aldi and Lidl are doing the same thing to the British retail market as well. They are already forcing the other retailers to `simplify their pricing'; ie get rid of confusing multi-buy offers. (British supermarkets used to double a price one week to offer Buy-Two-For-One the week after.)

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/feb/11/sainsburys-...

> Aldi said: “In our view, complicated promotions, multibuy offers and price matching schemes are confusing, are not transparent and do not serve the best interests of consumers. We focus on providing quality products at transparent everyday low prices that consumers can easily understand.”

They keep talking about perpetual price wars between supermarkets in the UK, but it was a pretty cozy place for the incumbents before the Germans showed up.

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