It's a sad tale, if you hear Dick Brass tell it. In a new op-ed for the
New York Times, the former Microsoft VP explains how he thinks the Microsoft corporate culture has "never developed a true system for innovation," and that while the company is obviously strong at the moment, he doesn't see the company retaining its dominance if or when the Office and Windows revenues die down. His own anecdotes are a little heartbreaking: his team developed ClearType (first announced in 1998), but due to infighting and jealousy within the company, was kept from shipping as a default until 2007 with Windows Vista. Similarly he argues that the
Tablet PC was much restricted by an Office team that didn't believe in the concept, and therefore never developed a version of Office that was stylus-friendly. Dick left the company in 2004, and he says the tablet group at Microsoft has since been eliminated, and that almost all the executives in charge of "music, e-books, phone, online, search and tablet efforts over the past decade" have also left. The man isn't out to get Microsoft: he sees the company as important, and its profits have obviously gone to great philanthropic ends through Bill Gates and others, but if what he says about the anti-innovative corporate culture is true, it sounds like Microsoft has some work to do before it can return to its place of preeminence as an innovator, instead of the fast and effective follower it seems to be becoming in many areas.
posted February 4th 2010 9:31AM
I hope this is not true. If this is true we will only be seeing another great american company go down over time like the chrysler and general motors. Pray it doesn't!
@Sravanchowdary
Oh I wouldn't be that worried about the demise of any great American company, be it Microsoft or whoever. What I worry about is whether the company that supersedes it is a US company as well.
Mr. Brass's article's title alluded to 'creative destruction'. Google that phrase and Joseph Schumpeter. It'll probably allay some of your worries.
@Sravanchowdary I like the BlueTrak Microsoft mouse and the Microsoft xbox, and Windows is still better than linux for me personally (for now). BlueTrak mouse + Live Mesh + Xbox each have large amounts of innovation and the fact that they also work properly (almost RROD ;D). How many well-known companies release stuff that is both new and effective? Everything I have bought from other tech companies is utter garbage; (iPod mini, Sony Ericsson 610i, etc). The only company that has made anything (which I have purchased) that is of substantial quality other than Microsoft is Panasonic. Each time a new Apple device comes out I get excited and wish to have one, but I never buy them, because I know that they are devices with non-removable batteries and deliberately limited functionality and will be another disappointing waste of money. & it's funny I am giving MS props because I don't even like them, seriously, I am waiting on google to take over, as I use almost exclusively their stuff. & besides my bad experience with Sony Ericsson's W610i phone, I will be getting myself one of their new phones soon. My point, I don't have a point I just wanted to ramble. But, Microsoft does innovate and make quality products and the only thing wrong with them is that they drag their heals and get things done slowly... + their online services are slow (even wonderful live mesh).
What frustrate me about microsoft is that all the potential is there to put together a great cohesive media environment for consumers, but they just don't put it together. It's crazy that I have 3 microsoft products on my computer that play music , vidoes, and act as a photo viewer. Win media palyer, media center, and zune software. Instead of making 3 okay products, make one awesomely.
@ACMartin I'm actually kinda against this idea, preferring separate applications for all that stuff.
The main reason is speed: if I'm opening a photo, why would I want to load up the stuff needed for playing music or video? If I'm going to listen to music, why should I need to see all my photo albums?
A second reason is reliability: if everything were in a single application, then a problem in one would take down the other two as well. Why should a problem in the Photo viewer take down my music player?
It's like suggesting a single application that does everything: web browsing, instant messaging, E-mail, music, videos, photos, games, documents etc. into a single application. Good luck recovering your important spread sheet when you come across a corrupt image.
@The Madman the point I was trying to make is that microsoft decided to offer 3 products that serve the same basic premise. So instead of dedicating time and resources into making one product the best they continue to support 3 products that serve the same premise to varying degrees of success. It's like support 3 different browsers, or 3 different email clients. I think this is big part of their problem, and why it's taking them so long to get winmo up to speed with the competition.
...because it's easier to take Apple's legitimate innovations that they fail to evolve, capitalize on, and give the fans what they've been asking for in the long term and actually do just that. Aside from the iPod of course. That's actually a pretty impressive piece of hardware, and this is coming from someone who owns a Zune 120.
Microsoft fans or stockholders can do either of two things. One is to deny, contest, make excuses, and pretend that everything is hunky dory in Seattle. Or they can look at the company with a cold detached eye and admit that Microsoft is still dependent on Windows and Office and the rest of the product line are mostly billion dollar sinkholes.
There is nothing new about what's going on with Microsoft. This is the downside of being a successful monopolist. You lose the skills/personnel that is necessary to succeed in a competitive market. You don't even notice that you've bled away those skills because they were not needed once you cemented your monopoly.
The irony of it all is if Microsoft had not resisted the break up that the Clinton DoJ was pursuing, the daughter Microsofts that would have come from that would probably be in much, much better shape today.
That's karma for whoring yourself and supporting a presidential candidate whose policies you mostly don't agree with just because he'll let you get off with a slap on the wrist and keep the fruits of your criminal actions.
@(Unverified) I do not think resisting the breakup is the problem. What is the problem is that they did not go beyond the two major products. They could have easily done well without breaking up they just did not find a way to cohesively manage that.
@(Unverified)
As both a fan and stockholder, let me say this:
Microsoft has never been an innovator.
(there, I said it)
Here's what I mean: In the beginning, they were a languages company - they did it well. IBM needed languages for their PC, plus they needed an OS - so they went and bought one. Which one did they buy? The innovator CP/M or the knock-off that got the job done QDOS?
Since that time gobs of these stories: Names you know like Visio, Hotmail, PowerPoint, thousands of technologies acquired through outright purchase. MS is more of a technology acquisitions company than they are an innovator.
So to say that MS "no longer brings us the future" misses the obvoius point - MS never brought us the future. They bring us the stuff that makes computers run today.
The rest of the inside baseball, dirty laundry stuff is bollocks.
Chris
@(Unverified)
What about XBOX 360 and XBOX Live? When there are 20+ million xbox live subscribers at any given time, all paying around $50/year?
@datafox
Here's the thing. The Office division, or the whole apps division is hamstrung by the requirement of "whatever you do, do not do anything that risks the Windows monopoly". The Windows division on the other hand is hamstrung by "whatever you do, do not jeopardize the Office monopoly". You're a MS engineer, you have a great new idea that happens to violate one of these twin directives (and I expect most new ideas will of course throw bricks at the existing infrastructure), how long before you just get tired of the shit and move on to a company that would let you flex your innovation muscle?
Agreed, why do u think Windows Mobile 7 took so long?
I think this might be why Jobs is such a good CEO in his way. That he takes charge and forces people to work together as one unit. MS seems to have too many managers that have fiefdoms where they do not feel an obligation or an interest to co develop products.
What MS needs is someone who has a tech background and is willing to go around and put pieces together so that it can make a formidable company based around collaboration. MS is taking baby steps at it and that should not be the case.
I think MS needs to evolve now to stay relevant and there is some evidence they know this.
See there purchase of yahoo mail and their push with Bing.
Also their push into the embedded automotive space - where I would not be surprised to learn they make more for each unit then they do for a copy of windows.
I believe there was a legal decision which is forcing them to be less proprietary with file types, etc in office - which will just encourage people to use other cheaper or free software instead as it should become even more compatible.
As linux gets prettier and more user friendly and other big potential moves like Google's most likely free Chrome OS gain maturity - the days of making big bucks on operating systems is also seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.
There's just no question these traditional revenue streams are coming to the end of their lives.
@savagemike
Wait wait wait. When did Microsoft purchase Yahoo Mail?!! Or you're referring to their attempt to buy Yahoo wholesale back in 2008?
I'll come right out and say it. Why is Steve Ballmer still CEO of Microsoft? If this were GE or a Berkshire Hathaway company, does anybody think he'd still be CEO today?
@(Unverified)
The dance moves, obviously... ;)
@BonoLux
Well, I will agree those are innovative.
@(Unverified)
Given the massive profits I'd say "yes, he would".
I am taking a Graduate class on this now. It is LITERALLY a textbook example - Lack of innovation and a culture that doesnt support new ideas is doomed to fail.
@ajhammer
Doomed to fail is a bit of a stretch: "Microsoft walloped Wall Street expectations Thursday when it announced record profit of $6.66 billion (up 60 percent from a year ago) and record revenue of $19.02 billion (up 14 percent) for its second quarter of fiscal 2010."
All this talk of why MS fails is a bit like talking about why Rome fell. Both questions are backwards because they both have (had)successful systems. The real question is why does Microsoft perform so well?
@dweezilb
Maybe if Rome figured out what they were not doing right, we'd all be wearing togas and speaking Latin today, eh?
Microsoft is in danger of becoming the largest buggy whip manufacturer on the eve of the invention of the automobile. Someday, the windows- keyboard-mouse paradigm is going to be superseded by something else. It might be touchscreen tablets, it might not. Whatever it is, does Microsoft have the wherewithal to compete in that savagely wide open market where Microsoft's twin monopoly crutches are basically useless?
Ha!"never developed a true system for innovation," and "anti-innovative"... Someone please name me ONE big company from software or hardware that haven't steal or copied another company. Usually big companies take advantage of the small players in this game that they think out of the box. And somehow this "never developed a true system for innovation" is something that a billion users LIKE IT!!...
And by the way big companies they like to make sure steps, there are SO MANY examples that great companies tried to make an innovation somewhere and then they failed.
@Sor1 You're mixing up 'invention' with 'innovation'.
How can this be true? Though they may not be providing the innovative technology themselves, they sure are enabling others to develop.
The best future innovative thing I can think of from MS are their Surface and windshield HUD, which are becoming a reality today.
I blame Twilight.
Microsoft's stroke of genius was licensing. Period. The passion for computers and technology ended at that moment - since then they've been riding the gravy train.
Microsoft is poised for a Renaissance with Windows 7 and multitouch. If they could move their mobile platform in closer lockstep with the desktop it would help The Zune HD is pretty slick, Xbox 360 is still a strong seller. The core technology is well in place.
It just takes a dynamic leader to step in and partner with the right hardware developers to release some dynamic products to compete with the flashy less substantive products from one other vendor.
@Patriot
If they had these core technologies in place 3-5 years ago, yeah then maybe more than an even chance for Microsoft. But they're only lining up their ducks today. And one of those ducks, Zune HD, is a zombie duck. Then, another duck you haven't mentioned WinMo7 might be more of a goose egg. It's mostly arriving at the party too late. And you can lay that all on Microsoft being a slow, lumbering, bureaucratic giant that just cannot pivot fast enough to keep up with the fast changing landscapes characteristic of newly opened markets.
Should we even listen to a guy who left 6 years ago?? What Microsoft was back then isn't true right now....look at Windows 7, Zune HD, Xbox's upcoming Natal.....
@averageguy
I can agree that Project Natal is rather innovative, even that is coming out in response to the Wii. They are coming at it from a different angle, and yes, that is innovative to some degree, but it is also primarily being done as a reaction to the Wii's success with a non-traditional controller.
The Zune HD as well is a response to the iPod Touch, and while it may be a great product (I certainly think the Zune line is underrated) it isn't all that innovative.
Windows 7 as well is a great product, but a great product isn't innovation. It's a solid operating system which is a very nice evolution of Windows Vista, which was an evolution of Windows XP, all of these still bear a striking resemblance to Windows 95, now approximately 15 years old. While the new ones are eminently more usable, they are all steady evolutions of what came before them. I would not call that innovation.
Ergo, while Microsoft is still an extremely successful company with a very solid lineup of products, they are not shaking the foundations of the industry (whichever one happens to be relevant) like a serious innovator would/could.
Well, I don't really like Microsoft anyway, but I do know one thing: inherent by definition, "the future" isn't here yet, so anything can happen. I love my 360 (despite the junky hardware) and that Courier concept looks promising.
Lack of unity has been a big problem at Microsoft for ages. It's been very clear that there is noone at the management level pushing a unified vision, beyond showy demos at CES for Gates or Balmer to present. Office devs are off in their own world, making new UIs that only trickle down into Windows years later. The XBox Live service is still an island, with only some recent integration with what the Zune folks were doing in the marketplace. Their PC games division still doesn't have Direct X updates pushed out via Microsoft Update. The list just keeps going.
They would be an amazing powerhouse of innovation to the end user if they could unify things better. Their research division does some awesome things, and the high level vision presented at CES shows is incredible. But very little of it manages to make it out the door as a complete product or solution to buy. And what does make it tends to come out with some weird issues, like the growing mess under the hood in Windows. Windows 7 might be an amazing release, but it's still a nightmare on the development side due to no real unified view of how to do things.
I don't know about "anti-innovative corporate culture", but I think that MS is a large Medusa of a conglomerate. The high-profile stuff (Windows, Offices, etc.) is conservative, but the lower-profile stuff is much more innovative, by my read.
Looking at Sync, Natal, Surface, and Zune together, you get the sense that MS is aiming for a completely different role from "sexy software maker". They are looking to be the integral intermediary for the now-digital life that everyone has.
Sync: Intelligent, user-friendly, and carefully-thought-out in-car computing and digital life integration.
Natal: More-or-less peripheral free-user-sensing software and hardware, with an eye to future gesture-based interface for all computing.
Surface: Similar to Natal, except touchscreen, and completely different file paradigm.
Zune: Stable OS platform for mobile devices, that's extensible and works well on more or less any hardware.
Take all four together, and you're talking about fully integrating one's productivity, fun, and utility through a single company's offerings. Even as a non-fanboy, it's pretty easy to tell that MS is not eyeing innovation for 2010, but rather 2020. And they seem to be out ahead of a lot of companies.
So this is like Woz to Apple? Not to sound troll-like but I've never seen Microsoft as any type of groundbreaker or innovator in manner being expressed here, so why the huge knock from an ex-employee? Is he bitter about something?
Microsoft is always going to be Microsoft. I think they always have been swinging like a pendulum. They go way wrong sometimes, but if you give them a little time they generally swing back and bring out some legitimately great software (like Windows 7). I'm sure in the future they will release something that doesn't really do so well in the minds of techies, but a few years down the road they come back and surprise everyone.
Playing the part of Robber-Baron works great...until it doesn't. Look at the list of huge US companies that collapsed in the last 10 years: they were all posting record profits until *poof*. Granted much of that was due to accounting fraud, and I completely believe MS's books are accurate. But things can go south very fast, and very suddenly.
Still, such troubles could be decades away. Read John DeLorean's 1979 book "On a Clear Day You Can See General Motors" for insight on a dysfunctional corporate culture, and you'll wonder why it took so long for GM to collapse.
The good news is that Microsoft is "too big to fail" and will certainly get a bailout when they implode.
He may or may not be right on the other things but it's ridiculous to criticise Microsoft because the XBOX is "at best an equal contender in the game console business". He makes it sound like that's some kind of failing, so unless they dominate consoles like they dominate the PC market it's a faliure? Frankly the XBox did great considering how late MS came into the cuthroat console market. The guy just seems to have an axe to grind, anybody who refuses to give credit where credit is due is usually biased.
That is absolutely not true. Innovation has never been easy. But yes, you have to knock the door. It is sad that after 7 years a man poorly understands what he had to do.
I guess I'd temper his comments with the following idea: M/S's ability to innovate still exists (in spades) it just innovates using it's biggest lever: Market Capitalization. What M/S is in the position to do (and does do, like many other large companies with solid revenue and large market cap) is to "buy" or "acquire" innovations from the market. As such, they really aren't so much an innovator as they are a new technology acquirer and integrator . . .
Er, am I allowed to make an amusingly witty yet humanely inoffensive comment about the VP's name?
as long as a "night on the town" consists of Claim Jumper at the Redmond Town Center for Microsoft marketing, their products will continue to lag.
Microsoft always seems to come late to the party with products. Case in point the upcoming Zune phone. Seriously? like 4 years after the iphone your just now coming out with your Zune phone?
I hope it doesn't stuck... =o/
As some of you have seen in other comments I've made, MS continues to show little to no leading edge thinking. Innovation is already dead at MS. Badly thought out reactive production is the best they can do or worst yet, acquire a promising technology or company and stunt it with the MS way!
The Cloud is here and there are more than enough companies with brilliant products and services poised to offer choices that will be easier, more productive and extremely cost efficient for clients to leave the mundane MS environment behind.
My wish for MS? Scrap the whole company and start over...oh yeah and this time...try looking at products from a consumer standpoint and not from an engineering standpoint. Engineers rarely know what sells!
Dick Brass is upset and lying to get even. I've had my MC LE1600 slate for years, and have used OneNote for more than 20 classes. It is full featured software with full support for both ends of my stylus and it's right click. Sure, you can't just open Word and start writing on the page, but WinXP: Tablet Ed. allows for various forms of input, and OneNote converts your writings just fine. Everything about stylus support in Office is satisfactory! I'm sure he can make an argument somewhere, but what is he really going to say when tablets traditionally haven't been in huge demand (even good ones). If I make an investment in a new slate this year, I will rest assured that I can still be productive with current MS Office offerings.
This is news? Everyone knows microsoft isnt an innovative company, they have been copying products and ideas since the 80's
You think huh? So what about Natal? I can watch blu ray on a windows machine. My pc supports touchscreen. And it has a lot of improvements under the hood. But there were also failures like windows mobile, Vista maybe, but they never said they didnt! So yes micro$oft could do a lot more innovation then it does right now. But look @ the amount of hardware they support. The enormous amount of hardware selling companies they work with. The amount of windows7 they sold....It's not innovative, but I think someone of them must be happy with microsoft :-)... at least do. So yes Microsoft bring me more innovation and Ill be more happy :-)