I wish the “leaders” could explain to me why this company cannot innovate. I am aware that every innovation is a risk, but that is no reason why a company should no longer innovate. I have no more hope and can't wait to get out of here, but it will never be clear to me - what is the reason for failure to innovate?
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"There's lots of grass roots innovation at the individual and small team level. Problem is that as soon as an initiative looks like it's taking on legs, a bunch of useless executives, desperate to make themselves relevant, use their political skills (the only thing they are good at) to attach themselves to the project. Before long the original innovators are sidelined, replaced with the useless executive's equally useless groupies, and the project dies soon after."
THIS is so accurate.
Also, teams are given little time to actually innovate. It's a feature based roadmap that changes based on the whim of leadership's hot priorities. The teams are not structured to work TOGETHER to innovate. Too siloed. We have to cut initiatives and all focus on a few core things. We say we do that and never do. Outcome is a broken "roadmap" with no innovation and gap in features.
SB travel the world? And never ever pay for anything!
Pre-COVID, SB (CTO) liked to travel-the-world giving mindless speeches that largely had nothing to do with the core product. Now, he's no where to be seen. The loss of all the Engineering brainpower is a death-knell for this once-proud company.
How many consulting firms does it take to bilk the company out of lots of money and come up with ABSOLUTELY NOTHING?
CTO asleep at the wheel? SB isn’t even an employee.
First, they have not driven innovation in the core Teradata database. And changing the name to Vantage is not innovation! Second, they have not penetrated adjacent markets through new products or acquisitions. CTO was asleep at the wheel. Most of the CEOs were just sales guys. No vision or risk taking. No wonder they are stagnant and being attacked from all sides.
Teradata has been leveraging the same underlying technlogy for over 40 years, with only incremental improvements. Save for minor tweaks to its parallel architecture, Teradata has been allergic to innovation. They will continue to milk the cash cow until it runs dry. Innovate? Why bother to innovate when you can squeak by on dated architecture.
When I was there, I remember trying to innovate a project, but it was shot down. Thing is, it's safer and easier for PM to cut a project and show how much money they saved the company, rather than work hard at innovating and take the risk of a failed project.
There's lots of grass roots innovation at the individual and small team level. Problem is that as soon as an initiative looks like it's taking on legs, a bunch of useless executives, desperate to make themselves relevant, use their political skills (the only thing they are good at) to attach themselves to the project. Before long the original innovators are sidelined, replaced with the useless executive's equally useless groupies, and the project dies soon after.