I'm also surprised that something approaching Dropbox is what I thought would be a good "idea" as part of a big corporation. More than being a "cheeky bugger" and being willing to challenge the CEO of a once-great company, the letter shows one way that big companies can't seize the obvious opportunities right in front of them. Here's the relevant part of the letter (typos and all):
"I was attending a FreeFlow training session so that I could familiarize myself with the software. Our group heard about the many benefits of FreeFlow products, but I asked the group leader why we didn’t digitally store the documents for the customer, thus offering a true document solution and simplifying our customers’ business. The advantages are that this brings in more revenue for us because we charge for digital storage, much like Iron Mountain charges for storage, except digitally.
The beauty of Iron Mountain is that everyone needs them and yet they charge a lot of money just to pick up a document, store a document, and then charge again every time a customer wants to view a document. We could be doing something similar, except digitally, and at a lower cost to our customers. However, our group leader’s response to me was “well, we don’t have the money” without even considering how buying servers and offering storage space could significantly add value to our business for a low cost and with very high profit margins.
Most importantly, I noticed that her negative mindset was infectious to the entire group – if everyone thinks we can’t get something done then it won’t, by way of those negative thoughts. We need to get rid of the latent negativity at Xerox and what I’ve noticed is an acceptance of the “inevitability” of lower than expected performance goals."
"I was attending a FreeFlow training session so that I could familiarize myself with the software. Our group heard about the many benefits of FreeFlow products, but I asked the group leader why we didn’t digitally store the documents for the customer, thus offering a true document solution and simplifying our customers’ business. The advantages are that this brings in more revenue for us because we charge for digital storage, much like Iron Mountain charges for storage, except digitally.
The beauty of Iron Mountain is that everyone needs them and yet they charge a lot of money just to pick up a document, store a document, and then charge again every time a customer wants to view a document. We could be doing something similar, except digitally, and at a lower cost to our customers. However, our group leader’s response to me was “well, we don’t have the money” without even considering how buying servers and offering storage space could significantly add value to our business for a low cost and with very high profit margins.
Most importantly, I noticed that her negative mindset was infectious to the entire group – if everyone thinks we can’t get something done then it won’t, by way of those negative thoughts. We need to get rid of the latent negativity at Xerox and what I’ve noticed is an acceptance of the “inevitability” of lower than expected performance goals."
Big corporations shouldn't be disrupted as much as they are by startups. Even bozo interns like myself could see the opportunity that a big company had at its fingertips. But even then, large companies are held back by very simple principles of momentum.
