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There's always going to be the debate between entrepreneurship vs "intrapreneurship". Whether large companies can successfully develop what amounts of startups in-house with separate R&D labs vs buying startups.

aka The Innovators Dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator's_Dilemma

The solution the follow up book to this one ^ was to build isolated teams that are flush with the resources/capital of the parents but aren't at the whims, or constant meddling, of the parent company's management class / stockholders / old ideas.

For all the effort Google/Apple/Meta/Xerox/Bell/etc put into their internal moonshot divisions the whole concept mostly hasn't been very successful.

But at the same time they also haven't been great at buying young up and coming startups either, often ruining them the second they arrive by the same impulses which demands R&D moonshot teams be isolated from the host.




Large companies often are significant investors in small R&D moonshots. Because they own a large part of the startup they can choose to buy it if the product turns out profitable, or they can sell. And since it is a separate investment when things go south they can stop investing and thus save money without appearing to let anyone go.




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