Reflecting on what I wrote more than six years ago, it’s now painfully obvious to me that the issues I highlighted—lack of focus, accountability and decisiveness—were actually just symptoms of a deeper problem. Yahoo!’s strength had emanated from the passion and entrepreneurial zeal of its employees, but these muscles had atrophied. The company’s core culture no longer encouraged and celebrated innovation with the same zest and ardent ambition to change the world—too often this had been displaced by half-hearted maintenance of the status quo.

I love that Brad Garlinghouse references 30 Rock:

The Shower Principle (thank you, Jack Donaghy) states that great solutions are often conceived when your mind is not focused on the problem. Sometimes interactions need to happen beyond the ping of an email or the (god forbid) drone of a PowerPoint presentation.

Read more on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shower_Principle

Oh snap:

In a recent blog post, venture capitalist Ben Horowitz relegated corporate culture to a second-class citizen behind creating a great product. I respectfully disagree. Great products don’t come out of thin air. They are an outcome of environments where innovation can thrive and talented people are encouraged to be bold.

Do great products come from great cultures? (Google)

Or is culture built around great products? (Apple)

See also the Ben Horowitz post: http://bhorowitz.com/2012/12/18/programming-your-culture/