Die Hälfte der Ingenieure ging

A machinery manufacturer stopped innovating in 2000. In 2018, half its engineers quit and started their own company. Eight years later, they're outbuilding the giant they left:

In a recent conversation with a colleague, I learned about an old company that built one machine extremely well, and the orders never stopped.

To management, it was a cash cow, and you don't fix what's printing money.

There was new research coming out, new materials becoming available, and a real chance to build something better.

They asked to build it, and management said no.

They were told there was no budget for it, and the message was simple: "Just keep producing what we already sell."

So they left.

A big group of them, all at once, and started their own company to build the machine they were never allowed to build.

Today, that spinout is 80 people. More than half of them from the company they walked out of.

Their technology is better than what the old company still sells, and now even the engineers who stayed behind are trying to join them.

The old company can still sell its machine. It just can't build it anymore, because the people who knew how are gone.

Half a team doesn't walk out overnight. The signals were there for years, in the people and in the market.

If management had been closer to either one, they could have reacted in time. They just didn't want to see it.