Why Big Companies Can't Innovate

This is by far my favorite reading (and post), so far in the course. I am very interested in the allowance and time provided by companies to let employees be creative in the workplace. I am an engineer by trade and typically, we try to make things better or more efficient in some way. Sometimes this involves innovating, but most of the time we are trained to think a certain way and perform tasks a certain way, that we are too far involved to really think outside the box to develop a better idea. The Gerber example in the article is a prime example of this. It actually makes me wonder how many other companies never launched "good ideas" because they were just too concerned about using the efficiency in the process. Maybe we should stop trying to make the current project "better", and just start from scratch. Like the article suggested, if Gerber wanted to make food for adults, it did not need a "Geber" label because Odwalla did not make the adult food look ANYTHING like Gerber. The issue here was that the employees were so far involved within Gerber, that the idea could not be completed successfully because the idea was actually valid.

One company that comes to mind with disruptive innovations includes Pfizer. Pfizer developed a drug (now known as Viagra) to help angina, a heart condition. However, the side-effects of the drug showed a promising treatment for impotency. This disruptive innovation led to a new market, replacing the experiments for angina.

I think many companies (not just the "Big Companies") do not provide time for the employees to innovate. Maybe if the scientists at Pfizer had time to explore special projects like Google's employees do using the 20% Time Program, this innovation would have developed sooner, or other developments would be revealed. Google created an new idea to allow its own employees to be innovators and many of Google’s products started because of this program. I think many corporations, but especially larger corporations shouldn't let the new employees be entrained in routine of the company because it limits creative thinking. Xerox proved that it "pays off" to provide employees some time to think outside the box.