About Michael Droettboom
I'm a computer scientist and software engineer, specializing in imaging and data: sheet music, scientific visualization, astromony, biomedical data and software telemetry. Open source software and open science advocate.
A company that operates in the survival mode during downturns ramps up new product development during boom times. In a good economy financing is easy and, as a result, many new companies are being started. There is an increasing demand for engineers and there is a lot of noise from all the new products being introduced into the market.
Towards the end of the downturn the company can try to improve the quality of its sales team by hiring people from failed companies. As boom times come back, the contrarian approach yields new products ready for the market and the sales team ready for the renewed interest. At this point the company becomes cautious of any aggressive expansions as costs increase. Instead, it concentrates on accumulating enough cash to repeat the cycle when the economy turns bad again.
During boom times companies rush to get to market as quickly as possible in order not to miss opportunities. A downturn, therefore, could be a perfect time to develop and introduce radical and unproven new technology that can take years to get right.