What industry experience do you base that assessment on?
Engineering design and analysis support, but it seems to happen most often in the software product lines of any company. Oracle's business model, for example, is based largely on revenue streams from training and consulting in the use of its software products, which are intentionally kept relatively baroque and complex so as apparently to justify the need for the training and consulting. I was at Oracle for a couple years.
The specific example of self-stifled technology comes from the commercial satellite industry. And I have a colleague, two of whose companies (as in, he started them) were bought (one by IBM and another by, I believe, Sun) under the guise of acquiring his innovative and competitive intellectual property, but instead having it put on the shelf in favor of those large companies' exisiting products. This guy is one of the smartest engineers I know, but those experiences drove him out of the industry altogother. He now sells real estate.
It certainly does not match my experience in the petroleum and metal industries and the subsiduaries that service them.
I would tend to believe that. In my observation those industries tend to have a more private perspective, to "take care of their own," in a phrase, and do more in-house. They have a much older management and operational culture than many newer technology companies. Mineral companies get a bad rap, especially in the United States. But from both a technical and managerial standpoint, considering such things as safety and efficiency, they tend to be among the better run companies.
However, since various petrochemical companies are my customers, I would say you stand a better chance of being on the giving end of one of those companies' revenue streams, depending upon how carefully you investigate your vendors.
When you say it happens, but not as a general rule, would you say that it is rare, occasional, or common?
It varies according to which specific sin of the ones I mentioned are being contemplated. Larry Ellison built Oracle to the second-largest software company in the world on the principle of supplying a baroque, poorly-documented product and then charging people money to show them how to use it.
The saying goes, "Give a man a fish and he eats for a day; teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime." In the high-tech business world it continues, "Convince a man to pay you for fishing lessons and you're set for life too."
The other instances I would say are comparatively rare, but (as I said) common enough to notice. I certainly don't condone stifling innovation that way.
I would certainly agree that people people often don't appreciate that commerical factors are as critical in whether an innovation is accepted as the technical factors.
Absolutely. This extends from the situation where something is cool and employs an innovative principle, but won't be successul as a commercial product for various reasons, to the situation where technical merit is completely overlooked in favor of the continuing profit in doing it the wrong way.
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