>Besides, competing would have meant doing exactly the same thing over again. What's the fun in that?

All of the baggage and tech debt gone! THIS TIME WE'LL DO IT RIGHT

It is not unheard of that employees leave a company to start their own precisely because the company is not addressing something specific leaving a gap in services. The startup begins to gain traction to the point the company the employees left buys the startup. It's like this is the only way for the company to "do it right", yet it would have been cheaper if they'd just let the employees do the thing as employees in the first place

	▲	yegle 4 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		PeopleSoft -> Workday
	▲	gridder 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Apple -> NeXT
	▲	bluefirebrand 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> it would have been cheaper if they'd just let the employees do the thing as employees in the first place Keep in mind the company is probably not refusing to do things because of cost. Often it is because of risk. A lot of people running businesses have terrible judgement when it comes to risk