James Barrese, eBay's VP of systems and architecture discusses...eBay

[mandy]

4 page article:

Much has been said about how CIOs struggle to align their technology investments with their business objectives. At eBay, technology is integral to the business, so in a very real sense we don't have to deal with a lot of the hurdles faced by many other Fortune 1,000 IT departments.

Of course, we do have challenges. Because of the nature of our business, there are few role models or best practices to follow. When you build so much from scratch, you also create new problems that have to be addressed without a legacy safety net to fall back on. More often than not, we--along with some other leading IT companies such as Amazon.com, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo--must simultaneously develop new technologies, business models, and operational conventions. In many ways, it's like building airplanes while in flight. This situation forces us to take chances and make leaps of faith that many technology leaders would find too risky. The big advantage, however, is that this environment encourages--in fact, demands--that our business-unit and technology leaders inject a continuing stream of innovation into everything we do, and that's what our corporate culture is all about...

full article:http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=201200007

a continuing stream of innovation into everything we do, and that's what our corporate culture is all about

and all this time I thought their corporate culture was about copying the innovator :twistedevil: