ABSTRACT
And yet the all but universal belief that large businesses do not and cannot innovate is not even a half-truth; rather, it is a misunderstanding.
In the fi rst place, there are plenty of exceptions, plenty of large companies that have done well as entrepreneurs and innovators. In the United States, there is Johnson & Johnson in hygiene and health care, and 3M in highly engineered products for both industrial and consumer markets. Citibank, America’s and the world’s largest nongovernmental fi nancial institution, well over a century old, has been a major innovator in many areas of banking and fi nance. In Germany, Hoechst – one of the world’s largest chemical companies, and more than 125 years old by now – has become a successful innovator in the pharmaceutical industry. In Sweden, ASEA, founded in 1884 and for the last sixty or seventy years a very big company, is a true innovator in both long-distance transmission of electrical power and robotics for factory automation.
