Worshipping at the Temple of Ideas

I was just listening to two prominent VC profiles at the Web 2.0 Summit – John Doerr and Fred Wilson.

At about 27 minutes into the discussion, things start to get to another level of intensity and interest regarding the whole aspect of innovation.

Fred claims “Google hasn’t had any major innovations since Gmail, which rolled out six years ago. “They haven’t home built from the ground up anything interesting in a half decade,” and John counters with pretty much ‘so what – they acquire innovative companies’

What both seem to agree on is the sentiment I like to re-echo – innovation comes back to execution. the alternative, as John mentions is ‘worshipping at the Temple of Ideas’ – ideas are really important, implementation is key.

Quoting Mark Rosoff at Business Insider:

“I’ve argued for years that Microsoft’s biggest problem isn’t lack of innovation. The company has tons of interesting innovations kicking around in its research labs. Its problem has been turning those ideas into well-executed products that are released and updated on a timely schedule. Microsoft has also had a horrific record trying to integrate acquisitions, like the $6 billion purchase of online ad platform aQuantive, which went absolutely nowhere, or the $2 billion it spent on accounting software companies Great Plains and Navision, which have shown little growth since then“

I would conclude that the deepest issue is not where we get our innovation from (home-grown or bought in the market), but what we do in the kitchen afterwards. Whatever your take on that, I recommend listening to the interview (beginning of this post), from 27 minutes if you’re in a rush.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/googles-lack-of-innovation-not-the-problem-2010-11#ixzz161B6U7lY

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