I had this experience in my own company for a very very brief time when we had enough money for it. We were (trying) doing innovation in the our R&D dep first but after that I tried to make that into something more. Unfortunately in a commercial entity (as is indicated in the article) this is extremely hard to do as when the time for new budgets arrives my co-founders would ask where the tangible (as in money) results were. Results did come and in the end it did actually break even but the freedom was stripped too soon to really make something happen. Sounds like the ultimate job to be honest.
And that at SAP of all places. I worked with SAP software and consultants and probably as many here who worked with SAP as well will probably agree; that is a far shout from this invent lab...
If you want freedom to do research without yearly commercial results expected there are still places like Microsoft Research and Oracle Labs where you can do this.
I can't imagine Larry Ellison letting anything out of Oracle Labs unless they invent a new way to permanently tie customers into existing legacy software.
I work at Oracle Labs and almost everything I do is done fully in the open, open source on GitHub, with lots of papers, blog posts and conference talks to explain how it all works.
Agreed, but I saw (and see) actual benefit for slightly smaller companies as well. I think any 200+ employee company should have both innovation and invention deps. Even services companies benefit from this imho.
Comments
I had this experience in my own company for a very very brief time when we had enough money for it. We were (trying) doing innovation in the our R&D dep first but after that I tried to make that into something more. Unfortunately in a commercial entity (as is indicated in the article) this is extremely hard to do as when the time for new budgets arrives my co-founders would ask where the tangible (as in money) results were. Results did come and in the end it did actually break even but the freedom was stripped too soon to really make something happen. Sounds like the ultimate job to be honest.
And that at SAP of all places. I worked with SAP software and consultants and probably as many here who worked with SAP as well will probably agree; that is a far shout from this invent lab...
If you want freedom to do research without yearly commercial results expected there are still places like Microsoft Research and Oracle Labs where you can do this.
I can't imagine Larry Ellison letting anything out of Oracle Labs unless they invent a new way to permanently tie customers into existing legacy software.
I work at Oracle Labs and almost everything I do is done fully in the open, open source on GitHub, with lots of papers, blog posts and conference talks to explain how it all works.
Are you the geniuses who invented the copyrightable API?
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/06/bad-news-supreme-court...
http://martinfowler.com/articles/copyright-api.html
http://www.wired.com/2012/05/api-copyright/
http://www.fastcompany.com/3048218/app-economy/heres-the-sca...
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150817/11362131983/yes-a...
Yeah, but Larry is really imaginative at finding ways to use awesome technologies to do that.
(haha only serious ...)
They're probably workibg on longevity treatments for a patient base of one: Larry Ellison.
Agreed, but I saw (and see) actual benefit for slightly smaller companies as well. I think any 200+ employee company should have both innovation and invention deps. Even services companies benefit from this imho.