Although a lot of people have read my blog, Big is Beautiful, I've been surprised at the total lack of rejection. Now comes still more input about big corporations and their research and development, supporting my suspicions and ideas.
It's true that Steve Jobs built the first Apple computer in his garage. And also true that Mark Zuckerberg typed the original lines of code for Facebook in his dorm room. But their real genius was not the invention by itself. It was translation.
When we talk creativity and innovation, we seem to omit the differentiating issue: translation. The ability to translate theory into practice. Robert Sternberg, the cognitive scientist, talks about creativity and innovation in three stages. First is that of creative intelligence, the ability to go beyond the given and create novel and interesting ideas. These are typically people who see connnections that other people don't see. Gates saw his basic software as connecting to IBM and Apple's computers, with the potential for making them free-standing.
Analytical intelligence, that ability to evaluate ideas, solve problems and make decisions is extremely important for creatives to analyze their own ideas and evaluate their merit. I worked for a number of years with a partner who could toss about more ideas than I could digest. But he seemed to lack the ability to evaluate the usefulness of those ideas and put them to work.
The third aspect of creativity, practical intelligence, is all about translation. It's the ability to "translate" theory into practice and abstract ideas into practical accomplishments. Translation, ultimately, is about selling. Indeed, the ability to sell your creative ideas determines whether it ends up on the scrap heap or becomes a product or service.
3M is famous the world over for its R & D. Having consulted there for years, I've learned that the best ideas can easily go into the circular file. Thus, inventors spend a lot of time with colleagues figuring out how to use the idea and how to sell it to the leaders of the company. And if the senior execs don't buy that idea, it goes nowhere.
The Foreign Affairs writers had this to say about big companies and their contributions to research and development:
Today, we celebrate small places with big ideas. It is true that Steve Jobs built the first Apple computer in his garage and that Mark Zuckerberg typed the original lines of code for Facebook in his dorm room. But the genius of Jobs, Zuckerberg, and many others was in turning their ideas into highly competitive global enterprises. Apple now employs 46,000 full-time employees -- and it is the combined energy of those employees that delivered the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad.
At the turn of the twenty-first century, the National Academy of Engineers ranked the greatest achievements of the previous century based on how each innovation improved people's quality of life. Major U.S. corporations -- the Edison companies, General Electric, AT&T, and General Motors -- played significant roles in the development, production, and distribution of the majority of these achievements.
It is safe to say that without its major corporations the U.S. economy would not be, and would not remain, the largest and richest in the world. Big businesses invest significantly more in research and development than smaller firms. And they are far better placed to capture economies of scale and scope, which is crucial to making U.S. goods and services competitive abroad. Large companies account for more than 70 percent of U.S. exports. The same economies benefit U.S. consumers, too. Despite the vilification of Walmart, for example, the arrival of a Walmart Supercenter to a neighborhood leads to a 25 percent decrease in the average grocery bill for local residents.
Beyond R&D performance, sales abroad, and bargains, big business offers what the United States needs most: jobs, and many of the best in the country, at that. The largest firms pay about 50 percent more and provide 10 percent more working hours per week than small companies. These firms provide jobs to almost a third of the American work force.
In our glorification of small business, let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater. We really, really need big corporate America. Big really is beautiful.
You cannot possibly realize how deeply writing this goes against my biases and my historical mindset. But reality is reality. And I believe it's important to sing the truth, even when it is very, very difficult. Otherwise, our country will be in a long, very hard slog.