The Innovators' Ball 282
Babylon Rocker writes "Latest Cringely: The Innovators' Ball: Why Business Isn't as Fun as it Used to be.
'Sharp business is cheating and not getting caught.'"
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The Innovators' Ball
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The use of money is all the advantage there is to having money. -- B. Franklin
Re:Oh, for the love of... (Score:0, Insightful)
You're new here, aren't you?
But seriously, folks, business has ALWAYS been about this. That's the way capitalism is set up... you cut out your competitors through any means possible.
What? (Score:3, Insightful)
Very true (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing is, I bet there are a lot of cases where one or two bad guys not necessarily right at the top can turn a whole company crooked (or at least semi-crooked) just because everyone else is too apathetic - or frightened - to shop them.
Of course, when the crooks really are at the top then it really sucks.
Innovation vs. Invention (Score:5, Insightful)
Most inventions were based on some innovation or the other - the IC was an innovative usage of the transistor, the microwave an innovative usage of UV, etc.
As Newton opined "If I have seen further, it is because I was standing on the shoulders of giants" I've created/invented software that I'm proud of and others might term innovation - what's so wrong with innovation anyway?
MS "innovation" (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing New (Score:5, Insightful)
No. Sharp business is 'cheating' while following the letter of the law. What he is describing is 'Sharp Criminal Conduct' which some business people and many politicians engage in. When the politicians engage in 'Sharp Criminal Conduct' they make it easier for those engaging in 'sharp business' to do really foul things without actually breaking any laws. It's a subtle, but important difference and worth remembering next time you vote.
Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Innovators have wiggle room. They can steal ideas, for example, and pawn them off as their own. That's the intersection of innovation and sharp business.
Hmmm, steal someone else's ideas and pawn them off as original. Sounds like Microsoft to me!
Re:What? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What? (Score:2, Insightful)
I feel it is possible their legal teams have innovated all over the place.
Re:decent (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:MS "innovation" (Score:5, Insightful)
A bit too cynical... (Score:3, Insightful)
Companies like Google, Berthshire Hathaway and others come to mind as good counter examples of what Cringley calls "gone from following the rules to playing the odds".
A sligh positive note in that article would have helped. Oh well
Exactly (Score:5, Insightful)
Some people assume if you end up with the desired goal of the system (wealth), than it has served its purpose. In reality, the system was devised not so an individual can become rich, but rather so we have a set of rules in which to facilitate improving our standard of living without resorting to social friction and unfair (subjective, I realize) treatment of others.
All the market tactics, advertising ploys, and accounting/legalese rule bendings seem to weaken the role of merit in capitalism. And I know what constitutes 'merit' is subjective, but I'd rather not give merit to those creative and smart enough to figure out how to bend rules in their favour without being caught.
Business is rough, play hard (Score:5, Insightful)
My recommendation is to raise money from people who already know or trust to some degree whenever possible, and ALWAYS, I repeat, ALWAYS, worry about control. Control is often times far more important than who has how many shares. Shares can very often end up worthless at the end of life of a business venture, if it is liquidated, or M&Aed away, or basically has any end-game other than an IPO, unless your shares are all on a level basis (this is a nice thing about flat LLC memberships and S Corporations as business entities, though that's certainly not necessary).
Just remember that you have to make sure that all your contracts and legal structure reinforce your power and control, and it's often better to give up some extra equity in exchange for this. Be careful who you trust. And never make yourself unnecessary before you have your exit strategy well on its way to execution.
Re: Innovation vs. Invention (Score:4, Insightful)
When a person claims to have "invented" something, it's pretty clear cut. The statement says they came up with a new idea and put that idea into practice. I don't think it's very often that you find a claim of an invention that a large number of people feel "uncertain" about.
When Edison claimed he invented the phonograph or the light bulb, it wasn't a matter of personal opinion. It was fact. Those two devices simply weren't around before then.
Innovation is a matter of opinion. One person's "innovative new way of displaying menu options" in software is another person's "terrible GUI design that should never have been attempted".
Is Microsoft innovative? Perhaps so, and perhaps not. It all depends on which side of the proverbial fence you stand on. (If you're one of their programmers and you're watching you own ideas become reality in new software releases, you're probably on the side that says "Yep, we're innovating!") Are they inventive though? Certainly not! You don't have to look far to see how many of their products contain code purchased outright from others. Even the pinball game included with every copy of Windows since '98 was licensed from Maxis.
Really, I don't think many companies are "inventive" at all anymore - and that's one of our problems. These days, there's more interest in litigation than invention - because it has a higher probability of profit/success.
Re:What? (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't get me wrong, I'm not anti-linux (on the contrary). I just think we need to admit linux's shortcomings and do something about them, instead of defending the obvious flaws as happens so much. Otherwise, microsoft's market share won't be dented.
obligatory mockery (Score:5, Insightful)
Cringely wants no part of that sleaze. He's a geek and a PBS writer instead.
For a while, it looked like people could be geeky and ethical while still turning a profit. This was a temporary illusion caused by a populace that had a religious awe of geeks, caused mostly by FUD, and was willing to overpay even those geeks who didn't really turn the screws. The middle managers who forked over millions of dollars (which THEY had scammed from others) for their own electronic replacements were not making headlines during the late nineties, but there were more of them than there were techie nouveau riche.
So. Every geek, and indeed every human, must ask him or herself whether to try to profit by bringing misfortune to others, or whether to embrace poverty, in the unlikely hopes that that will make the world a better place. I don't have an answer to that for myself, let alone for everybody, but claiming that the sky is falling just because the tech bubble burst months ago is worthy only of ridicule. It is good for anyone, even slashdotters, to be reminded of these Big Questions; but all in all, I think Cringely and most of the rest of this crowd are in way over their heads.
Will Warner geocities.com/wtw0308
Re:What? (Score:3, Insightful)
As damning as this sounds, Microsoft's success totally eclipsed everybody else they 'stole' from. Either these companies have all had a nasty run of bad luck, or Microsoft put everything together into something the market wanted. Whatever your take is on it, the market wanted Microsoft provided. Learn to live with it.
Ah you missed the point innovation invention (Score:5, Insightful)
The point of the article was that innovation was a corporate metaphor for playing politics, cheating and stealing, and invention was just invention. He said that Microsoft was an innovator, not an inventor.
Delete the filth and the smut from this site NOW! (Score:1, Insightful)
Rant over...
Re:obligatory mockery (Score:5, Insightful)
I would reccommend reading Dostoevsky's The Idiot [amazon.com] for some enlightenment on how the world treats those who act morally and conscientiously in regards to life and business.
It surprises me not at all... (Score:1, Insightful)
What this country needs is less laws/lawyers and a helluva lot more justice!
Re:Oh, for the love of... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not capitalism. It's dirty business. And what Cringely calls "sharp business" isn't sharp business, it's sharp dealing. Sharp dealing, the way my grandfather used to use the term...as in, "He's a sharp dealer." It's not a nice thing to say about somebody.
Capitalism means that if you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door (grossly simplified, I know). It does not mean that it's open season on your competitors to do whatever you can to get them out of the market. What Cringely described in the first half of his article may not have been legal, but don't confuse it with capitalism. It was dirty business, nothing more, nothing less.
And usually I hold what Cringely says at arm's length, but his second to the last paragraph, the one about innovation is, at least to me, right on the mark. I almost can't stand the word anymore.
-h-
Re:obligatory mockery (Score:2, Insightful)
It isn't fun (Score:5, Insightful)
This is because we allow office politics to completely absorb every single moment of every single day in "corporate" businesses.
There is absolutely no concern for a quality product or a truthful discussion of the right and wrong ways to build something in the cubicles. It's who can fuck who over so they can keep their job while simultaneously destroying someone else's career. It's who can point out the most failures. It's who can foster the most suspicion and doubt about their colleagues' competency that succeeds in the never-ending schedule of meetings.
And nobody ever talks about it. Nobody ever squarely points out the enormous amount of time and money that is wasted, man-hour to man-hour, by people building spectacular layers of redundancy to cover every possible and several impossible failure possibilities while attempting to answer the unanswerable questions posed by middle management.
These are the same people by the way, who insist on everyone being a "team player." Of course, that only applies when these people are the quarterback, not the left tackle.
Want to know where the largest source of waste in business is today? This is it: office politics. People working against each other instead of working as part of a team which actively encourages people to grow and succeed. It's a disgrace and it shouldn't be allowed to continue.
Re:What? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Sick of Cringely (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What? (Score:4, Insightful)
There are problems with ditching Windows: while OOo etc. make it fairly easy to ditch Office these days it's harder to ditch Outlook if your customer insists on your having an MS Exchange server to sync business appointments etc., and although it can probably be done with a minimum of Windows machines and everything else running codeweavers plugins to Evolution it's just so much less hassle to keep running Windows. (There isn't actually much economic sense in ditching it as it's so difficult to get bare metal PCs in the first place: businesses have already paid the Microsoft tax.)
When did everyone take the stupid pills? (Score:1, Insightful)
Oh, come on! When did everyone take the stupid pills? When did lawyers get the reputation of being fine, upstanding people who always do what is ethical? This is the same profession that has all of those jokes about how awful they are, isn't it?
Also, when did the board members, owners, CEO's, and the like, of large corporations become trustworthy, ethical titans of industry? What about the Robber Barons of old? When was there a switch to the ethical so we can be surprised that they switched back?
Geez! Business is the same as it always has been. It's just the spin and PR that has changed. People are scum, and powerful people are powerful scum. History keeps repeating itself and we just keep forgetting how it was and is.
Re:What? (Score:2, Insightful)
Depends on your use of the term 'true.' The pioneering GUI development that preceeded the Lisa was significant. The first prototype 'mouse' was developed in the middle of the 1960's, for goodness sake.
And the Lisa was a dismal failure in the market. I remember about 1990 when they sat mute in used computer shops and we could say in wonderment 'ten thousand bucks.'
The IBM 5100 was only about ten grand, and it was a hell of a machine for that money, a half a decade before the Lisa. (not GUI-wise, of course)
Re:Business is rough, play hard (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Very true (Score:3, Insightful)
Ignorant. Too ignorant or oblivious to even notice they are being screwed until it is too late.
The case that Cringley describes, the founder of the Corp got ousted through boardroom manuevering. Do you think he would have seen that coming in a million years? If you incorporated your little company, and owned 80% of the common stock, would you have realized how vulnerable you were to being screwed by the company lawyer? Would you have realized that you could be shut out of the company -- and deprived of all profit -- through a procedural ploy?
And if the founder of the corp didn't figure it out, despite having to deal with these jackals regularly, how would anyone else below him in the organization figure it out? Hell, the person he hired to counsel him on this sort of thing was the person who turned out to be working for the enemy.
The sorts of things Cringley is talking about happen at the top of a company's food chain. There are simply fewer people in that pool, and that means bugs in the policies and procedures are less likely to be noticed. Effectively the company was legally 0nz3rd. The company he described got the corporation-equivalent of rooted, though a vulnerability in the terms of incorporation.
Re:Oh, for the love of... (Score:2, Insightful)
Since when did good sportsmanship enter into the equation? If anything, capitalism has ALWAYS been about beating others at ANY COST. As a matter of fact, society was FAR WORSE 100 or 150 years ago than now. I don't know where you came up with the notion that capitalism somehow has morality or ethics built-in. Even Adam Smith (considered to be the "founder" of capitalism) remarked how business owners are very sleazy and ruthless.
We are living in a "post-Christian" society, and this is the result.
Society was far worse under the Christian "leadership" than now...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Payment for volatility (Score:5, Insightful)
One real problem is rewarding executives for volatility, rather than profits. We need long holding periods on insider stock, maybe five years. That way, if you do a startup, you don't get to cash out for five years, by which time it's clear whether the profits are real. The holding period used to be two years; it was changed to six months in the mid-1990s. Look what happened.
Pay for volatility encourages dumb merger and acquisition activity. Most mergers turn out to be a long-term lose for the stockholders, but a short-term win for management. Management needs to be on the hook for long-term losses.
Executive pay should be set by the stockholders. Each stockholder puts on their proxy how much the CEO's total compensation should be, and the share-weighted median is used. Executive pay is up by a factor of several hundred since the 1950s, even after inflation adjustment. Third-rate CEOs of money-losing companies are making multimillion dollar salaries. Executive pay decisions should pass through the ultimate owners, who are typically people with money in pension funds.
Those two changes alone would cut out considerable dumb financial activity.
That's actually a common Russian saying. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Oh, for the love of... (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't "assume" anything. This isn't the first time in history that men have turned to worshipping the works of their own hands, and the results are always the same.
You assume that without fear of eternal damnation, people will do whatever they want and knowingly act in immoral ways.
Now it is YOU who are assuming. I said nothing about "eternal damnation." When you believe there is a higher power, a cause greater than yourself, when you turn yourself outward and realize that "do unto others" is beneficial to yourself as well as the other, civilization works.
When you worship yourself, your own intellect, the works of your hands, your lucre, your "perfect" body, etc., you have no time for anyone and anything that might distract from it, and they are fodder for your ego.
Human nature never changes, and just because we live in a hyper-technological society that allows nearly everyone freedom to indulge in self-worship--including worship of their own intellect--does not change basic human nature.
Re:MS "innovation" (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, The Newton is predated as well. Rat Shack had the 'Pocket Computer' whose primary fault was that it came out before the state of technology could really support the idea. Prior to that, several Science Fiction writers actually anticipated the real devices by many years. In turn, they realized the possability only because computers in some form existed, so they owe their ideas to the long line of people responsable for that.
Each step along the way was an improvement for the potential end users, but would not likely have happened or could not have happened without the previous step.
For any one of those entities to claim to be solely responsable (and by extension, solely entitled to reap the benefits) is arrogance in the extreme and just plain wrong.
In the case of 'MS Innovation', they often don't improve the idea at all. The changes they do make are primarily to eliminate interoperability and weld the product to Windows. 100% strategic marketing 0% invention. In many of those cases, MS initially negotiated with the real inventors and innovators just long enough to pump them for information and keep them busy while they secretly copied the idea in total.
You'll notice, for example, that when they aded 'doublespace', they certainly didn't talk much about stacker (who sued them). When they bolted multitasking onto DOS, there was certainly no mention of Desqview (which was vastly superior). Theyt actively denied that Windows was a knock-off of MacOS even though it was pretty obvious.
That's generally a pretty good clue by the way. Someone who has invented or truly innovated will tend to speak highly of those who went before them and speak freely about the fact that they built upon the work of others. In general, the MS Innovator (or practisor of 'sharp business') will try to convince you that they invented it themselves in a vacuum or at least will make no mention of others unless pressed.