Large Companies and the Possibility of Real Innovation.

This paper examines the question of whether it is possible for a large company to be truly innovative, with particular emphasis on the Microsoft Company.

Large Companies and the Possibility of Real Innovation.

Large companies have unique issues when it comes to being innovative. Unlike small companies that have the luxury of finding a niche market for unusual and out of the ordinary products and services, relying as they do on their core group of customers, large companies must appeal to the broadest common denominator in order to remain viable. In other words, large companies must find a way to reach the largest number of customers possible in order to remain financially viable. Being a large company is an expensive proposition, and so the products and services a large company offers must be appealing to enough people to bring in the large amounts of money that the company needs to keep its operations going and still turn a profit.

English: The MITS Altair 8800 computer was the fir...

ALLEN MALAU

Microsoft and Flickr

Large companies do not have the luxury of being too experimental or of being too innovative, as that might scare away the majority of the buying public. Even if large companies could afford to be more experimental, it is difficult for a large company to create something that is truly innovative. This paper explores why it is impossible for a large company to be truly innovative.

Look at a telephone company as an example. While telephone service is the main product of telephone companies everywhere, it is really communications that the telephone companies are selling. As such, most telephone companies are now also selling cable, cell phone, and Internet packages. While the types of packages they offer may differ, the basic products remain the same.

This is what large companies mainly do, they innovate and variate on already existing technologies. For...