Bell Labs and things like it were around when the primary purpose of a business was to make money, and do it healthily, rather than to find a bigger fish. It's no wonder many of these companies were quite old. They created sound businesses.
For the giants of today it's all about milking existing products for all their worth. Not finding new revenue avenues. The modern stock market is to blame. If number goes down then the earth is on fire apparently.
The other aspect is, why try and innovate yourselves when you can wait for someone else to do it and then try and acquire them? It's short term thinking but that's what business is largely about these days.
Maybe this will change with time. I suspect it will as the world is on a track to become more insular again. This may drive innovation at home.
Back in the day, people wanted to build a sustainable, long-term business. Now they just want to create profits, and it often happens by dismantling these great decades-old companies brick by brick, until the line don't go up no more. Then you collect your bonus and move on to the next victim. GE and Boeing have been gutted. What valuable company is next?
We live in a time when the incentives are ass-backwards. Your customers should be first, your employees second, and only then, all the way in the back, are your shareholders. When the shareholders are placed first, you find yourself in broken, late-stage capitalism.
For the giants of today it's all about milking existing products for all their worth. Not finding new revenue avenues. The modern stock market is to blame. If number goes down then the earth is on fire apparently.
The other aspect is, why try and innovate yourselves when you can wait for someone else to do it and then try and acquire them? It's short term thinking but that's what business is largely about these days.
Maybe this will change with time. I suspect it will as the world is on a track to become more insular again. This may drive innovation at home.