Calm Down, Hippies: What San Francisco needs to Learn from the Valley

http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/24/calm-down-hippies-what-san-francisco-needs-to-learn-from-the-valley/

by ssclafani • 16 years ago

18 6 16 years ago

It is axiomatic around here that large corporations cannot change, except by acquiring start-ups.

Why? Because any organisation with more than N employees starts to behave unconsciously, evolving according to profit and logic-of-the-situation. (I don't know what N is. Somewhere between 8 and 200?)

That's what those people are (unconsciously, angrily) reacting too.

neilc2• 16 years ago

large corporations cannot change, except by acquiring start-ups

I'd be curious to see examples of large corporations that have changed by acquiring startups.

philwelch• 16 years ago

Apple (NeXT), possibly Intuit (Mint).

cemregr• 16 years ago

Whenever somebody uses 'hipster' as derogatory I think they feel they aren't cool enough.

geebee• 16 years ago

"Similarly, I know self-made Internet millionaires who’ve bought old properties in transitional neighborhoods in San Francisco, only to give up on restoring them because they met so much neighborhood opposition to anyone “wealthy” coming in and rehabbing a historic property."

San Francisco can be too preservation minded, this is true, and neighborhood associations regularly go too far. For instance, I had to pay $150 for a permit to replace my windows with energy efficient windows, and the city turned down my initial plan because they wanted wood that was consistent with the historical look and feel of the house (irritating because 1) city leaders make a bit display of "going green" and then charge people for a permit to improve energy efficiency, and 2) city leaders rarely enforce the permits, since about half of my neighbors obviously didn't bother getting permits to do the same.

Still, I'd like to hear a bit more about this "restoration" before I'm completely ready to believe that the neighbors opposed as part of a knee jerk opposition to "anyone “wealthy” coming in and rehabbing a historic property". Preservationists would almost certainly welcome a true "restoration" of a dilapidated house. Something tells me there the different parties in this dispute have different interpretations of the word "restore", and the author's friends may be just as excessively loose in their use of this word as the neighbors are excessively restrictive...

I'm not saying it didn't happen, I'm just saying something seems a little off here.

Calm Down, Hippies: What San Francisco needs to Learn from the Valley

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