The Hypocrisy In Silicon Valley's Big Talk On Innovation

glowend writes "James Temple writes in the San Francisco Chronicle: 'In the fall of 2011, Max Levchin took the stage at a TechCrunch conference to lament the sad state of U.S. innovation. "Technology innovation in this country is somewhere between dire straits and dead," said the PayPal co-founder, later adding: "The solution is actually very simple: You have to aim almost ridiculously high." But for all the funding announcements, product launches, media attention and wealth creation, most of Silicon Valley doesn't concern itself with aiming "almost ridiculously high." It concerns itself primarily with getting people to click on ads or buy slightly better gadgets than the ones they got last year.' I feel like this may be true as more money and MBA types invade the Silicon Valley. There's a lot of 'me-too' startups with some of the best and brightest figuring out ways to sell me stuff rather the working on flying cars."

Comments

Re:Innovation has been killed by overzealous IP

[Darth Snowshoe]

"public sector pension funds which are desperately seeking excess profits to make good on political promises to government retirees."

A pension is not a political promise. A pension, whether in the public or private sectors, is an agreement between employer and employees.

Re:how do you make money if you don't sell anythin

[erroneus]

I don't think you're getting it. Sales and marketing are, of course, important aspect. But the thing they are saying is instead of selling new things, they are selling old things (sometimes with incremental improvements) in new ways.

But this problem is much larger really. Everything from music to movies and TV shows are doing this sort of thing. How many super hero movies? The new territory seems to be fairy tales. Why aren't they writing really original stuff?