Xerox PARC developed most of the technologies that would define the personal computer, but Xerox didn't have the culture, structure or expertise to properly exploit those innovations.
Yelp was founded in 2004 and went public in 2012. By the time the mobile transition was really in full swing, they had accumulated a lot of institutional inertia. Their developers had spent years working on a big web app. They had a huge codebase that hadn't been designed with mobile in mind. They had a particular revenue model and brand image.
Turning that ship around requires courageous leadership. You need to recruit or retrain a lot of developers. You need to convince your shareholders to support a major investment that might not pay off. You need to gamble on a new business model that might undermine your existing revenues. You might need to navigate existing internal conflicts or risk creating new rifts within the company.
This is what makes startups so powerful. They're focused, they're not weighed down with institutional baggage and they have permission to fail.
Yelp was founded in 2004 and went public in 2012. By the time the mobile transition was really in full swing, they had accumulated a lot of institutional inertia. Their developers had spent years working on a big web app. They had a huge codebase that hadn't been designed with mobile in mind. They had a particular revenue model and brand image.
Turning that ship around requires courageous leadership. You need to recruit or retrain a lot of developers. You need to convince your shareholders to support a major investment that might not pay off. You need to gamble on a new business model that might undermine your existing revenues. You might need to navigate existing internal conflicts or risk creating new rifts within the company.
This is what makes startups so powerful. They're focused, they're not weighed down with institutional baggage and they have permission to fail.