Another reason that small firms are better innovators than large ones, this time from Paul Graham, speaking at Startup School:

A lot of startups worry "what if Google builds something like us?" Actually big companies are not the ones you have to worry about-- not even Google. The people at Google are smart, but no smarter than you; they're not as motivated, because Google is not going to go out of business if this one product fails; and even at Google they have a lot of bureaucracy to slow them down.

What you should fear, as a startup, is not the established players, but other startups you don't know exist yet. They're way more dangerous than Google because, like you, they're cornered animals.

posted by James DeLong @ 3:27 PM | Patents

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