A Comparison in Corporate Innovation Between Google and Microsoft : From Beginning to End scripted by Employees

Here are two highly contrasting personal stories about innovation in major technology companies, Microsoft and Google - in Microsoft's case from a former Vice President and in Google's case, an employee who has been with the organisation for one month. This is a fascinating comparison between an idealistic starter at Google, eyes wide open as if experiencing the candy shop for the first time, where all before him seems like an unclimbed snow covered mountain peak full of wonder and awe offering the glorious challenges of a lifetime, not without its dangers, that can be conquered in the due process of time and a former Microsoft Vice President, who like many true innovators in organisations was thwarted over time not by his will or want to innovate or for that matter the organisation's publicly expressed desire to do so but by the organisation's internal culture and processes and the inherent power struggles which regularly conceal and undermine the inherent nuances and subtleties required for organisational innovation. These articles read together offer compelling examples of the importance of idealism, yet show its powerful constraints and undoing. The real mystery in innovation is seeking the balance between imagination and pragmatism. This piece begins with the untainted imaginationand ends...well read on.

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Corporate StoryTellers - The Rise of the Employee Author or How To Gain Real Insights about Companies.

A fascinating email turned up in my In-Box the other day asking me to explore JobVent. On first inspection, I thought this was some form of joke and I wondered how a site of this nature could exist without being threatened with legal action. However on further inspection, this site is a wonderful expression of Web 2.0 democracy and the power of corporate story telling. The fascination lies in the ordinariness of an employee's stories about work practices and how those work practices influenced them and their every day lives. Employees convey their impressions authentically. There is no spin here. No positioning, no editing, what you read is the unspoken being revealed. Contributors voluntarily offer opinions about the companies they have worked for, their employer and fellow workers and are asked to rate their organization via a simple poll based on pay, respect, benefits, job security, work/life balance, career potential/growth, location, co-worker competence and work environment. Here is a comment by a former employee of Perform Air Internation

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