My opinion is that "getting big" can either be an increase in the number of workers or the degree of maturity.
As a company becomes older, the need to run all kinds of crazy experiments suddenly doesn't matter anymore. They care more about stability and profit. Yes, there is Google X and I know Google still run all sorts of crazy data analysis. But the point is, they want to become more structural because of the number of projects needed to approve. If twenty researchers each request to run a project each takes 1M out of Google, those research better have some formal proposal or so so they can evaluate which gets priority. Also seniority? Two top talents can compete for the same resource but if one team makes more "promising" result than the other team does, the winner is obvious.
Now coming to BD. BD isn't exactly unlike Google. It's exactly China's Google. It has reached its own maturity, but when they want to expand westward and when they want to steal talents from Google, they will have to strike better deals, be it compensation, work freedom and resource support.
I will not be surprised a few years down the road Ng will find similar hurtles within BD once he's all "used up" (sorry for the lack of better word). But of course, what matters is what he can do now.
As a company becomes older, the need to run all kinds of crazy experiments suddenly doesn't matter anymore. They care more about stability and profit. Yes, there is Google X and I know Google still run all sorts of crazy data analysis. But the point is, they want to become more structural because of the number of projects needed to approve. If twenty researchers each request to run a project each takes 1M out of Google, those research better have some formal proposal or so so they can evaluate which gets priority. Also seniority? Two top talents can compete for the same resource but if one team makes more "promising" result than the other team does, the winner is obvious.
Now coming to BD. BD isn't exactly unlike Google. It's exactly China's Google. It has reached its own maturity, but when they want to expand westward and when they want to steal talents from Google, they will have to strike better deals, be it compensation, work freedom and resource support.
I will not be surprised a few years down the road Ng will find similar hurtles within BD once he's all "used up" (sorry for the lack of better word). But of course, what matters is what he can do now.