TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington wants to see the big boys get a bit more creative in their approach to new product development.
I am seeing an increasing trend of the big guys simply copying what successful startups are doing. AOL with AOL UnCut and AIM Pages. Google with Google Notebook and a flurry of other projects, etc. The only large company that is even experimenting with unproven concepts at this point is Microsoft with its various Live.com ideas. I’d like to see more experimenting at the big company level.
Ironic since Microsoft pioneered and perfected the copy and slightly improve ideas way of doing business. There’s still, I think, a lingering fear of innovation left over from the dot com bubble. A lot of these people who work in the bigger companies are employees of small start ups that went under 4 years ago. Just a theory.
Agree. Not terribly impressed with what Google Notebook comes up with so far – they can certainly be a lot more innovative with its massive amount of resources!
Thought you might also be interested in checking out http://www.diigo.com, a new startup about to launch. It’s about “Social Annotation” – packed with advanced productivity enhancing tools that let you highlight and add sticky notes right on any part of a webpage to serve as a personal reminder or as a way to interact & exchange thoughts with other readers right on the very same webpage you’re reading
It is still under closed beta. I would like to invite you to try it out. We’d love to have your participation and hear what you think!