Point. I was thinking that whoever comes up with ideas for stuff car companies should be doing has incentives to come up with good ideas, but I guess there are various plausible reasons that isn’t enough (responsibility could be too diffuse, people might not feel like they’ll end up getting enough credit for a good idea...).
Who’s going to give an auto designer any credit for a completely boring and obvious idea like “larger cupholders”? The incentives are almost certainly in the direction of affiliating oneself with higher-status design changes (satellite radio, integration with apps and Internet, etc) rather than lower-status ones.
Capitalism doesn’t work by reputation- if I develop a feed formula for cows that makes their shit more beneficial as a fertilizer, then Monsanto and others will beat a path to my door. (Unless they steal it, but same thing.)
The incentives come from money, and as Vespasian said, “Pecunia non olet.” (Money does not stink)
If you’re talking about someone working for a large company and designing something mundane but better, the incentives may be more diffuse, but I don’t believe that lost purposes are so terribly entrenched that the incentive is effectively invisible.
In my personal experience, designers/innovators working for companies are never rewarded for making their company more money. Sometimes their bosses are. My boss got a $20,000 bonus when I saved NASA $40 million.
Point. I was thinking that whoever comes up with ideas for stuff car companies should be doing has incentives to come up with good ideas, but I guess there are various plausible reasons that isn’t enough (responsibility could be too diffuse, people might not feel like they’ll end up getting enough credit for a good idea...).
Who’s going to give an auto designer any credit for a completely boring and obvious idea like “larger cupholders”? The incentives are almost certainly in the direction of affiliating oneself with higher-status design changes (satellite radio, integration with apps and Internet, etc) rather than lower-status ones.
Point. (See, that’s an actual explanation and not just a generic appeal to insanity.)
What?
Capitalism doesn’t work by reputation- if I develop a feed formula for cows that makes their shit more beneficial as a fertilizer, then Monsanto and others will beat a path to my door. (Unless they steal it, but same thing.)
The incentives come from money, and as Vespasian said, “Pecunia non olet.” (Money does not stink)
If you’re talking about someone working for a large company and designing something mundane but better, the incentives may be more diffuse, but I don’t believe that lost purposes are so terribly entrenched that the incentive is effectively invisible.
In my personal experience, designers/innovators working for companies are never rewarded for making their company more money. Sometimes their bosses are. My boss got a $20,000 bonus when I saved NASA $40 million.