Believe me, when I say Innovation (in the context of software development), you would have definitely thought about a company/product which is in it’s early stage, i.e. a startup. Off course, there are lots of large companies in the market with lots of resources (a.k.a. developers) and infrastructure and funding. But why couldn’t those companies make it to your mind, when you think about innovation?
The reason is simple – process.
Just compare the way the developers work at startup with their big companies counterparts. Startup developers mostly develop from scratch (or building on other open code), bringing in new ideas, brainstorming about different technical possibilities, trying to improvise their code/design – thus trying to be innovative. These fellas don’t need to follow any process. All are on their own to do things differently.
By process, I don’t mean the water fall or agile. The SDLC is more or less common between big companies/startups. But most big companies have one extra thing – their proprietary framework/tool and the process to develop on the framework/tool. So, when a developer join a big company, he/she made to learn the company’s process. After this, there will be very less opportunity for the developer to think and do things differently. All he needs to do is follow some process and complete the work.
By saying this, I’m not devaluing the process. In my opinion, every big company MUST need some process in order to manage the large developer base. But, when the developers have the defined path (i.e. the process) in front of them, they mostly tend to take that path and miss to create new paths. In other words, the developers are becoming less innovative.
That’s why I say, when it comes to Innovation, startups rock and big companies, suck!
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Hmm very valid points put there.
There is another catch also. These processes actually help the so called developers who doesn’t want to innovate anything but want to do work so that their wallets are filled in the end of the month. For them these frameworks are like GODsend (Nerdy developers) .
Instead of that the big companies should divide these nerds with the nuts to foster innovation. What do you think?
yes, the innovation depends on the developer’s willingness too. Even if you mix the nerds with the nuts, it won’t change the nerd’s mindset if he/she does not want to do anything new.
True!!! I found most of people uneasy to work more at big companies. Because the innovation in their work reduced by time. And they found their selves less technical efficient than people who are crazily working at small startups. As you stated big companies come up with their defined processes and they have separate departments to do their jobs. What developer has to do, is a very specific type of work.
Small startups are crazy, agile, small teams, more communication, no bureaucracy and more technical things to eat.
exactly!
I too agree that we dont get that much learing ability in big companies… and more over working in a home production company is not that great and challenging…work is devided and segrigated more than our java design patterns..
… a company where we work its more a business than technical… if you have to rock in company then learn business as it does not have much space for technology… our hands are ties like Indian laws.. 
hm.. the other advantage of learning business is you are becoming inseparable from that company. because it is easy to replace technical people as they are abundant,. But the people who know the domain and business are rare!
so, want a job security then learn the domain is the way to go!
Another negative for this is you can’t easily move one.
Well Said!!!
The thing is, in smaller companies you have to work on the all the phases of Software Development, You feel like you are doing so much and you feel happy to learn many things.The other important thing is, in smaller companies, we can easily share our ideas with the Clients, at least in some cases in bigger companies we’ll miss this, because everything is done already you are going to follow. Bigger Companies, Bigger Clients, So process becomes important…..As Manikesh said we should be focusing on business/process rather than technology in bigger companies, which is very difficult for some developer’s
hm.. developer wants to develop. they never be good at managing things. that’s why they chose startups and that’s why there are lots of innovation happening at startups.