Thank you for the coherent, clear and sufficiently detailed story. Former IBM mainframe Systems Engineer here, I later rode many innovation waves and caused a few. Wonderful to see you close the loop. (Technology) history may not repeat itself, but it does rhyme. Basic principles survive, embodied in different technology.
A talk designed specifically for marketing lizards who don't understand anything except money and customers. I have never heard anyone say the word "innovation" so many times in 20 minutes, and it was sad: this is someone who's adapted to a cut-throat corporate culture that is pathologically risk-averse, with executives who have cultivated a total ruthless focus on making money off customers or they get fired. Real R&D is long term. It is not about delivering "customer value". It's not about customers at all. It's about working out how to do new stuff. It's the opposite of cost-cutting.
Think you might want to work in academia if you don’t want to be concerned with customers. Even in academia you still should be concerned with users there just are fewer incentives to support it. Thats why its often very hard to copy the implementation behind papers you read. It’s important to realize that technology is not “good” as an ends in itself but as a means to improve the human condition, its important to think about people/users in the R&D process or the runaway train that is technological momentum can lead you in some very bad directions. Corporate and monetary incentives can do a similar thing serving as a forcing function to exploit your customers and competition; but they also link many of your priorities with those of your consumers, if market incentives and public policy maintains conditions that allow for this… this got long… whoops
It's always great to see James Hamilton explain anything. Such a deep thinker and an extraordinary professional.
Thanks! Now I’ll watch and read everything I can find.
Thank you for the coherent, clear and sufficiently detailed story. Former IBM mainframe Systems Engineer here, I later rode many innovation waves and caused a few. Wonderful to see you close the loop. (Technology) history may not repeat itself, but it does rhyme. Basic principles survive, embodied in different technology.
Thanks for sharing, as a solutions architect I get tons of value knowing how this was built.
What a great speaker and narrator.
😀 🙌
Great story! Thank you!
How many defunct restaurants and pubs just because Mr. James Hamilton went there for business deals... ;)
I know correlation does not imply causation but everytime these guys visit a pub, it goes bankrupt.
A talk designed specifically for marketing lizards who don't understand anything except money and customers. I have never heard anyone say the word "innovation" so many times in 20 minutes, and it was sad: this is someone who's adapted to a cut-throat corporate culture that is pathologically risk-averse, with executives who have cultivated a total ruthless focus on making money off customers or they get fired.
Real R&D is long term. It is not about delivering "customer value". It's not about customers at all. It's about working out how to do new stuff. It's the opposite of cost-cutting.
Think you might want to work in academia if you don’t want to be concerned with customers. Even in academia you still should be concerned with users there just are fewer incentives to support it. Thats why its often very hard to copy the implementation behind papers you read. It’s important to realize that technology is not “good” as an ends in itself but as a means to improve the human condition, its important to think about people/users in the R&D process or the runaway train that is technological momentum can lead you in some very bad directions. Corporate and monetary incentives can do a similar thing serving as a forcing function to exploit your customers and competition; but they also link many of your priorities with those of your consumers, if market incentives and public policy maintains conditions that allow for this… this got long… whoops