From the Dallas Morning News: Why doesn’t Microsoft out-innovate Apple?
First off, what the hell is in the water in Texas? Either the writer is extremely dumb, or they published this “blog” post just to get a lot of comments (and you’ll see there’s a lot).
The writer ends the piece by answering his own question. Yes, innovation has nothing to do with how much money you pump into a company, or a department. Also, giving a company an ‘innovation lab’ does not infuse them with forward thinking.
Innovation comes from the DNA of a company. It has to start from leaders and weaves through everyone else in that company. Innovation can never come from the other direction. Innovation cannot stem from a junior level employee and spread throughout the company and all the way up to senior management.
As a hypothetical – transplanting Jonathan Ive from Apple into Microsoft will not help Microsoft spawn a breakthrough product. The only think it will help spawn is an angry mutant version of Ive.