How can big companies keep the sparks of innovation?

Market of testers
Eric Reis's views have held sway with internet companies for many years.

The chief executive of Renren, one of China's largest social networking sites, thinks that an internet company is in a strong position to bring products to market fast, and adapt accordingly.

However, while they can experiment and tweak the product, he also warns of the importance of speed.

Mr Chen also believes innovation is central to an internet company's success.

"Inventive culture is always the secret recipe for a lot of technology companies," he says.

And to this end, he believes companies needs to have a structure that enables this.

Just as large companies can be too cumbersome and slow moving to be inventive, Mr Chen thinks large teams are also not as conducive to innovation.

"You want to break people into smaller teams and make them accountable for the particular endeavour that you engage," he says.