I believe the OP means time and dedication in their investments, not simply money. The type of things that startups grind through to become successful. Appropriate amounts of money do need to be injected - but at the right times, not necessarily from the beginning.
Bigger companies have a bad habit of comparing the early results of experimental internal businesses with the ROI of their mainline business and cut the cord before the product/market was actually ready to be flooded with cash to scale up.
It's funny how the business classic "Innovator's Dilemma" was written largely about companies like Intel who exist in traditional technology markets with predictable evolutionary modes... yet they still suffer from the same lack of 'intrapreneurship' mentality by treating internal startups with immature markets as if they were mature product lines.
They should probably stick to acquisitions of real startups in the growth stage or actually stick-it-out for the long run with the markets they invest in, rather than looking for high growth opportunities within a short-timeframe or nothing.
Burning early adopters is never a wise choice if that market turns out to have legs.
Very interesting that you should mention "Innovator's Delimma". I remember when Andy Grove made that required reading for all of executive staff, and divisions had to incorporate the thought process in their plans.
You are right that this is showing classic signs of not giving innovative business units enough runway to find their product-market fit. That's really hard to do given Intel's culture.
Craig Barrett did a lot of damage. One Intel mid-level manager described him as a pinata. "Who ever hits him the hardest gets the most candy." So managers reported synthetic disasters in order to get more funding. Paul Otellini was great, I have huge respect for him, but his tenure was too short lived. Otellini understood how to build a market.
That's an interesting backstory, I was not familiar with the fact Andy Grove made it required reading. It really should be for every tech company management, regardless of it's age.
The farther a company gets from it's early roots the harder it gets for them to recreate the 'early days'. Unless they get a shake up in management. But the typical people good at startup culture would get killed pretty quickly in bigco corporate culture.
Bigger companies have a bad habit of comparing the early results of experimental internal businesses with the ROI of their mainline business and cut the cord before the product/market was actually ready to be flooded with cash to scale up.
It's funny how the business classic "Innovator's Dilemma" was written largely about companies like Intel who exist in traditional technology markets with predictable evolutionary modes... yet they still suffer from the same lack of 'intrapreneurship' mentality by treating internal startups with immature markets as if they were mature product lines.
They should probably stick to acquisitions of real startups in the growth stage or actually stick-it-out for the long run with the markets they invest in, rather than looking for high growth opportunities within a short-timeframe or nothing.
Burning early adopters is never a wise choice if that market turns out to have legs.