Ask HN: How Do Companies Innovate?

5 points by wastoids 4 years ago | 3 comments

This question really bugs me, and am curious if anyone has any first hand experience seeing innovation 'happen' in a company. How do companies actually innovate? Especially when everyone is working on projects all the time?

For example, you may have seen this before, of 2 cavemen hauling a heavy load with a wheelbarrow with square wheels, with another showing them round wheels - "sorry, we're too busy" they exclaim and off they go: https://www.creativityatwork.com/wp-content/uploads/wheel.png.webp

You see most of my working life (programmer) all I've been is busy; working on projects non-stop as thats what I'm being paid to do - work. I've never once had time to innovate except maybe something minor on the fly. The project managers don't exactly innovate, as they're not tech focused so no one really innovates.

But then I see companies whom are obviously innovating all the time, ie chip companies: the process of 10mm to 7mm to 5mm is mind blowing to say the least, but theres no way they came up with the process on the fly? Did they? They must have had time to think, for a long time.

So how do they do it, are there specialised employees who are paid to sit around and 'ponder'? Are there employees being paid to do nothing but experiment with not a guarantee of ever solving any problem? How do companies actually innovate?

kleer001 4 years ago |

I don't have a concrete answer for you, but a suggestion to continue your line of questioning. I think you're very close to the answer, but skimmed over the path.

How do you find the answer? Talk to people in chip manufacturing, after doing some deep researching into that one particular company. While you may run into a dead-end there's other companies to query. Eventually someone will talk to you and you will become illuminated.

Be prepared, the answer might seem obvious or trite once you dig down to it.

GianFabien 4 years ago |

In the past, large companies had research/innovation departments, e.g. IBM Research, Parc Xerox, Bell Labs. In recent times large companies only innovate in terms of coming up with ever faster ways of making more money (financialization) - cutting costs and research departments were the earliest casualties.

These days, real innovation happens mostly within startups.

jarl-ragnar 4 years ago |

In my experience, internally funded research and development. A proportion of revenue is reinvested to fund IR&D projects focused on areas identified through longer term engineering roadmapping activities.