[greenail]

One of the problems I observed working with GE was they had pockets of a few smart folks who knew what they were doing and armies of people managing outsourcing without really having retained the industry specialization knowledge. It seemed like they barely knew their own business at times, they didn't understand the technology and they were highly specialized in dealing with external vendors. This would lay blame on execs like Gary Reiner who pushed outsourcing everywhere. They did try to turn that around and it is probably worthy of a book to review what they tried to bounce back from over-outsourcing, what worked, and what didn't.

[paleotrope]

I don't think that's specific to GE.

I am coming around to thinking that all good things are driven by small teams of less than 10 people maybe even less than 5, who all have a shared vision and drive to accomplish something. Everyone else is just along for the ride.