Kidrobot - The key to their success and why large corporations suck
I was reading an article in Fast Company magazine today about a hugely successful company called Kidrobot. The headline said something about how they were using open-source ideas to fuel their creative process, which is cool — but what stood out to me was a quote towards the end that read “It’s all about the right energy, the right people, and putting enough pressure on the situation so that people are making decisions very quickly, and so that people’s guts are what are reacting, not their heads.” It got me thinking about how a lot of large corporations struggle with innovation and how they’re slow to react to change.
I work for a large public university, which is a lot like a large corporation with many smaller companies under the same umbrella. Each college runs it’s own shop, but we all have to fit in with the overall direction of the university. Change happens very slowly around here, too much time is spent over-thinking things instead of reacting with your gut. Not that people shouldn’t think things through, but if you spend too much time thinking about how to do something, you’ll probably end up talking yourself out of doing it completely. Add about 10 more cooks to the kitchen and most of your projects will never even make it off the runway.
So what can be done to make large corporations more agile and prepared for change? Do what Kidrobot did — use smaller groups that are focused on one task, but led by someone who understands the overall vision. So it sucks working in a silo, and it sucks not having collaboration with other groups, but if you want things to happen faster you have to keep the other cooks out of the kitchen. It’s kind of the same reason why larger companies out-source or contract out — things happen faster if you have one little group outside of the company focus on delivering on one task without getting them tied up in red tape. You don’t build a building by having every contractor sit down in a room and plan out how the building gets put together, you have a foreman who understands the vision and knows how to keep the right amount of pressure on everyone to get the job done.
This turned into more of a rant, but I’ve worked for large corporations and had to suffer through mergers and un-mergers while the people at the top of the corporate pyramid search for that perfect blend of “synergy”. Meanwhile the little guys are getting their product out quicker and can adapt to market demands faster because they don’t have to get 10 directors in a room each week to replay last week’s meeting about where the company is headed.
