The WNY Technology Blog

Recently, slashdot posted a link to a NY Times OPED piece by Dick Brass, a former Microsoft vice president.  ZD Net’s Mary Jo Foley was quick to follow with Microsoft’s challenge: Innovation, innovation, innovation, offering some comments and a few more links.

Dick Brass tells us,  “Microsoft, America’s most famous and prosperous technology company, no longer brings us the future, …” Some are quick to say they never did because much of the technology that made the softies rich – Basic, DOS, Windows, Word, IE, … – was derived from ideas that originated elsewhere. Even so, a lot of creativity and hard work has gone into making Microsoft what it is. He goes on to say, “More than any other firm, it made using computers both ubiquitous and affordable. Microsoft’s Windows operating system and Office applications suite still utterly rule their markets.” Like it or not,  it this is largely true, isn’t it? Then he bemoans that  “Microsoft has become a clumsy, uncompetitive innovator,” and tells us this is because, “Microsoft never developed a true system for innovation.” He goes on to cite personal knowledge of a couple instances of innovation stifled by turf wars and concludes, “while the company has had a truly amazing past and an enviably prosperous present, unless it regains its creative spark, it’s an open question whether it has much of a future.” The piece, and even the title, Microsoft’s Creative Destruction, make interesting reading; I encourage you to take the time to read it -  I’ve even provided the link twice.

Mary Jo Foley notes the same thing I immediately thought. “The most surprising thing about a number of industry watchers’ reactions to these complaints, in my mind, the fact that anyone is stunned to hear that Microsoft is a political place, populated by some execs who seem intent on building empires inside the Empire. Hello, corporate politics! Show me a big company that isn’t a shark tank, and I’ll show you a company that has no teeth.” She goes on to point out, “Secondly, I’m also surprised that anyone familiar with Microsoft’s history is shocked that one Microsoft team tried to kill off another team’s project because it was viewed as internal competition. It was common knowledge that when Bill Gates was still CEO at Microsoft, and for years afterwards, Microsoft’s brass routinely pitted one team against another inside the company and let ‘the best’ team win.” She also points out, “As others have said today, it’s easy to be the Monday morning quarterback, analyzing in hindsight what Microsoft could/should have done. It’s hard coming up with ideas about how to make a company as big and established as Microsoft able to keep pace with a rapidly changing tech environment.” So true! I think she’s hit the nail on the head and I encourage you to check out the rest of this article as well.

This reminded me of Working at Microsoft, an essay published a while back (it seems to be undated),  by Michael Brundage, discussing what it’s like to work for Microsoft. He offers some very interesting observations. “Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer get most of the press, but it’s an open secret that all of the division heads (and their staff, and their staff) are top-notch. I’m (happily) oblivious to how that circle operates, so I can only judge them on their results.” “In contrast, most of the middle management should be tossed.” I’m glad I saved this link. There have been a couple others, from other authors,  that I now wish I’d saved, pointing out that – surprise – working on projects at Microsoft is a lot like working on projects at other large enterprises.

How are things at your organization? Do turf wars stifle innovation? Does the organizational structure encourage innovation? Think about it.

© Charlie Wertz, February 2010

(This article is posted at http://wnytechblog.wordpress.com and at http://cjwertz.wordpress.com)