Why Big Corporations Aren't Creative

Great post. My experience with many corporations as PR clients is that they are also often declining to participate due to fear of risk of what employees and outsiders may say. As you rightly point out, though, the idea of control is futile. A majority of large corporations aren't even regularly monitoring what is being said about them. Corporations in health care and certain financial services are also concerned about regulatory risk.

I'm going to challenge your observation B.L. -- I think many companies are realizing social media is here to stay. Most are groping for the best way to make it happen. They're definitely fearful, I think you're dead-on there. It makes sense since they have always had message control (or the illusion of it), and now they don't. But this is changing. Case in point, I'm speaking at a conference of accounting firms next week, and the two topics of greatest interest: how they can use podcasting and blogging to grow revenues. As the leaders in each industry take the plunge, more will follow I'm sure.

Jeff: You misunderstood rather challenged my observation.

I didn't say big companies aren't interested in entering social media. I help them enter this space all the time. I said that the fact that their own divisions are unaware of what their other divisions are doing, that people in one area of the company compete with another is what keeps true collaboration from happening.

Few companies are leaders anymore. Innovations scares them to mediocrity. You can't really blame them. It's easy to fall behind if your resources are limited (as most companies' are.) Most people in management would rather see the projects/ products on which they are working improve gradually. It's low-risk. Allocating great employees to work on high-risk projects isn't an idea they love.

Consumers are the ones that can truly challenge them. If consumers demand more, companies will be forced to innovate to stay competitive. Pretty simplistic, but it could work.

Thanks for clarifying B.L. I think one of the other things that keeps larger companies from innovating is their fairly large infrastructure of people set up to block innovation: namely, Legal, and sometimes, HR and IT. To your point, it's kind of hard to consider sharing ideas in a blog or podcast when your first thought is, "Will Legal ever let us do this," and your second thought is "And if so, will IT ever get it done?"