Uber COO says there's a downside to being at the top
Uber COO Andrew Macdonald explained that the company's massive scale makes it difficult to innovate, as core business operations consume most of the organization's resources. He noted that Uber is currently prioritizing autonomous vehicle investments to drive future growth.
Why it matters
It illustrates the 'innovator's dilemma' faced by tech giants, where maintaining a massive core business can stifle the agility required to develop new, disruptive products.
Uber COO Andrew Macdonald said large companies with new ideas move more slowly than startups as employees get "fat" on the resources. Zed Jameson/Bloomberg via Getty Image Uber is one of the largest ride-hailing companies in the world, with more than 200 million users. Uber COO Andrew Macdonald said that kind of scale makes innovating at the company harder. The executive said Uber has a program called "Growth Bets" to incubate new business ideas. At the top, it's hard to know where else to go. In an interview on Harry Stebbings' 20VC podcast published on Monday, Andrew Macdonald , Uber's chief operating officer and president, said that finding new businesses can be challenging when the company's core business is already so large. Call it the "classic innovator's dilemma ," he said.
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