I'm sure no one will say that an R&D organization should be run the same way as a production organization. Creation of a fancy new product depends on a lot of things that don't line up with the way to run a production line/factory floor, of course. The latter can lend itself to formalization; the former, of course, cannot. That's why skunkworks and R&D departments are run the way they're run - you can't really productize invention, you can only invest in a wide portfolio of attempts and hope enough pan out to justify the investment.
On Mon, Dec 21, 2015 at 12:41 PM, Atom Powers <atom.pow...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Thank you Yves, you describe what I term the "business culture" very well. > A year ago I might have agreed with anybody who described this as the > "only" way to run a business. Now I believe that it may not even be the > best way. > > Where did Gmail come from? Or Amazon Mom, Google Glass, etc.? These > products were not built to satisfy a specific need for a given life cycle; > they were created because somebody thought that it would be cool to do that > and then the business supported the experiment to build that product the > best way that they could, without an immediate concern to whether that > product would be profitable. > > Talk to anybody at Amazon and they will tell you that their driving goal > is to build the best product for their customers. Not the most profitable > product or the product that fills a niche, just the best product they can > build. If you go to Google and say "we should build a router for X specific > market segment" they will laugh you out the door; if you say "we should > build a router because we can do it better than anybody else" then you have > a new project to work on. > > Much of Drucker's work does apply to a "craft culture" and some of it > blatantly doesn't, like managing top-down resource constraints. The > Capabilities Maturity Model is generic enough that it could apply to either > and it makes no mention of how or why a product is being developed. > > I'm interested in books and resources about working in and creating a > bottom-up "craft culture" organization. Or in learning that I am now insane > and need to spend some time in a padded room without Internet. > > > On Mon, Dec 21, 2015 at 9:21 AM Yves Dorfsman <y...@zioup.com> wrote: > >> > On Dec 21, 2015 9:51 AM, "Atom Powers" <atom.pow...@gmail.com >> > <mailto:atom.pow...@gmail.com>> wrote: >> > >> > A business culture organization is one where you do work >> because it is >> > profitable to do the work. You build products because you want >> people >> > to buy those products. Examples: Comcast, Dell, Oracle, and >> almost >> > everybody with publicly traded stock. >> > >> > A craft culture organization is one where you do work because it >> > improves the product. You build products because you want to >> build the >> > best thing. Examples: Amazon, Google, Lego, and often private >> companies. >> > >> >> On 2015-12-21 09:03, Atom Powers wrote: >> > Of course business cultures try to make the best product they can (as >> long as >> > it is cost effective) and craft cultures try to make money (on the best >> > products they can make). It isn't a black-and-white distinction. You >> could >> > probably also call this a top-down (business) vs bottom-up (craft) >> culture. >> > >> >> I don't buy this... To me craft resonate with Maturity Level 1 (※) you're >> playing around, learning, with no care for cost nor efficiency. "Business" >> resonate with Maturity Level 3 (※) and up with understanding of costs, >> profit, long and short term goals etc... Yes there are people doing >> "business" at each level of maturity, and some businesses move through >> levels while other cater for different levels in different departments (eg: >> R&D vs Production, startups vs established market). >> >> There is no such thing as "the" best product, products are design for a >> specific need for a given life cycle. Everything real-world product is a >> compromise (even mustard!). For example, what is "the best network switch"? >> For people who don't need VLANs in their home, the 60$ one, for my own home >> the 200$ one, but I hope my ISP is using the 3000$ one an has two of them. >> >> >> ※ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability_Maturity_Model#Levels >> >> -- >> http://yves.zioup.com >> gpg: 4096R/32B0F416 >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Discuss mailing list >> Discuss@lists.lopsa.org >> https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss >> This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators >> http://lopsa.org/ >> > -- > Perfection is just a word I use occasionally with mustard. > --Atom Powers-- > > _______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing list > Discuss@lists.lopsa.org > https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss > This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators > http://lopsa.org/ > >
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