Report from Cnet that costs for Apple’s new HQ have ballooned to $5 BN. It’s not that Apple can’t afford it, but monuments to corporate ego rarely turn out well.
I’m writing this from suburban Chicago, and if you walk down to the end of the street and look left, down the Eisenhower Expressway, you can see the Sears, oops! I mean Willis, Tower.
Slightly East of New 
Great story Chet.
Just as Microsoft’s best days are behind them.
I’ve worked a lot in and around major sports arenas and stadiums, which similarly have turned into veritable whore houses, when it comes to corporate sponsorship and naming rights. It’s all about corporate hype, ego, and prestige.
Monuments as such in the context of your story remind me of the hollywood axiom, “once you start believing your own hype, it’s over”
So, come to think of it ?
Where does that leave the Pentagon ?
Is it not a monument in it’s own right, and under sequester, maybe the military could reclaim some funds, by re-naming it, the LockMart center, with the Boeing wing, and Raytheon plaza.
M
I often wonder do we own things……or. Do the the things own us ??? Once we get in deep enough with a product or project it is hard to swallow your ego and get out…. As a product manager at times I kill products – projects unfortunately it takes more wrangling to kill a product – project than start one. A product – project is someone’s baby …. Parents protect their children ….
Forwarded to me from 奥猎, an abstract hunter in northern Europe:
One sees that projected building, and immediately, the quote below springs to mind. Parkinson has a whole chapter on this, with good examples, but the following quote is the gist.