Re: Engineering rules of thumb and Amazon's HQ2 effort
"J. Andrew Rogers" <[email protected]>
| Newsgroups | gmane.culture.people.rohit-khare |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
See also: The curse of building a shiny new headquarters http://www.businessinsider.com/poorly-timed-headquarters-2009-11 <http://www.businessinsider.com/poorly-timed-headquarters-2009-11> I generally buy the idea that the distraction of creating the perfect new building/monument tends to steal attention from ruthlessly executing the business. Andrew > On Sep 11, 2017, at 7:02 PM, Ken Meltsner <[email protected]> wrote: > > Are our tech giants getting a bad case of edifice complex? First > Apple with the "spaceship" HQ, and now Amazon putting out an RFP for > their second headquarters. > > Last week, sdw mentioned one of the most famous engineering "laws" > (Postel's). Well, way back at my first professional, permanent job > (GE R&D), Stephen Spacil, one of my colleagues, had come up with an > engineering "law" that ought to be better known: > > By the time you build a new facility for an opportunity, the > opportunity will have passed. > > There were many examples at GE in Niskayuna, like the coal > gasification building that wasn't completed until coal gasification > was shown to be a dead end both economically and technically, or the > lab space purpose-built for a division that was sold shortly before > the lab was completed. > > And the corollary is that junky buildings, like MIT's famous Building > 20 [1] (built as temporary lab space during WWII, but used for more > than 50 years) are often the most productive spaces for novel ideas > because no one cared what happened to it -- labs routinely drilled > holes in walls and floors to make space or connections for unwieldy > equipment, for example. > > Really makes me wonder about Apple's new headquarters which is > probably too beautiful to hack if a flexible space is needed, and now > Amazon's stated goal of adding a second headquarters. > > > Ken Meltsner > > [1] Brand, Stewart (1995). How buildings learn: what happens after > they're built. New York: Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-14-013996-9., cited > at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Building_20 > -- > After 30+ years of email, I have used up my supply of clever .sig material. > _______________________________________________ > FoRK mailing list > http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork _______________________________________________ FoRK mailing list http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork