Chris,
Could you post an attribution for the image of David and Goliath please ?
Cheers
Silicon Valley is the new Valley of Elah, the place where David slew Goliath by using a disruptive innovation. Today's Silicon Elah is the holy ground of Clayton Christensen's venture capitalists' bible, The Innovator's Dilemma, and its incredibly powerful idea of disruptive innovation. Oddly Christensen is giant-like in …
Chris,
I think this is a great job of writing something useful while in church. Unfortunately as we're not allowed to use computers on the Sabbath my Rabbi would smack me (after sundown of course) were I to attempt such a thing.
I think I'm going to have to have a go at the all flash array as disruptive technology myself soon.
See you at EMCworld.
- Howard
" The big folks get richer while the little folks get poorer. Money is sucked upwards and doesn't fall back down to earth. Some things never change. Anybody care to disrupt that?"
Actually there is a mechanism already in place in the USA which works against the Big Guys. It's called, the HR Department. There's an arc to a company's history:
- Startup - Owner hand-selects high-quality hires
- Company accelerates upward. Makes tons of ca$h.
- HR department organized
- Peak of arc, company is huge, HR department given entire control of hiring
- Only liars, posers, and toxic personalities get hired - they have all the most brilliant resumes
- Competent employees jump ship for small start-ups
- Company is now populated almost entirely by incompetents who spend their time surfing the Net and infighting. Products suffer and the company is headed downhill.
- Down it goes. The HR department is almost the last department left, ensuring that the Company will grind into the dust before its nose can be lifted up far enough. (Or it will get sold.)
Every US companies is at some point or other in this arc. So there is justice.
Is your article a commentary on social inequality or the lack of innovation beyond basic features and functions in Silicon Valley? I'd recommend refraining from mudding the waters. This is after all 'The Register' for C's sakes.
If you end up writing about lack of innovation by the large companies, then you should at least talk to the people working there. Gone are the days where each of the computer companies had groups focused on cutting edge technology uncumbered by the needs for massive returns or time lines. For example HP Labs claims StoreOnce is a product of the HP labs. Shareholder should be agitated by the waste of resources that lead to that product versus say innovation in storage using say OpenVMS systems (which EQL is said to be based on).
Don't look now, but David used a sling---in the picture you see him on the backswing, about to loose his secret weapon. A slingshot is a forked stick and elastic. I doubt even the Wrist Rocket* models are more powerful than a skillfully-wielded sling. (Of course, that's the down side: a sling takes a lot of practice to get good at.) Think of a slingshot as a very small bow, and a sling as an atlatl for rocks.
* http://www.archeryexchange.com/shopexd.asp?id=74