SteveJ-restore-test

Paul Budde recently questioned, "Will Microsoft be able to make the jump?" [04-Apr-2010] For other comments see my pieces " Death by Success " and " Death by Success II ". He quotes the marketing "S-curve" and Summer Players by Carol Velthuis describing company performance and market maturity in seasons of the year. This is a response to Budde's query: "I have always found it difficult to understand why Microsoft has left it so late to fully embrace the new environment -i n relation to both the Internet in general and mobile broadband." It's because they are trapped by their success. They are not alone nor the first, as definitively documented in Why Smart Executives Fail , by Sydney Finkelstei, a Professor of Management at Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business. Specifically: Lack of vision and competence in Management,  Rigid and bureaucratic heirarchy, Dysfunctional culture, and Incompetence in their technical speciality...

Prior Related Posts: Quantifying the Business Benefits of I.T. Operations The Triple Whammy - the true cost of I.T. Waste Force Multipliers - Tools as Physical and Cognitive Amplifiers I.T. in context Alan Kohler and Robert Gottleibsen have been writing in "Business Spectator" about the relationship between jobs and Economic Productivity. They note that the USA has improved productivity in the last year while in Australia it has declined (+4% and -3% respectively).  My take on this is: a gross Failure of Australian Management. There is solid research/evidence that "ICT" is the single largest contributor to both partial and multi-factor Productivity, and is expected to be so for the next 20 years.  This is an big issue. Kohler ties this back to a Telstra survey , now in its second year. The 2009 ACIL Tasman whitepaper notes: While investment in ICT has boosted the productivity of workers, Australian firms, industries and the national economy, productivity levels in ...

"Microsoft Office is obsolete, or soon will be" By Joe Wilcox. I hadn't picked this trend, it's quite important. It squeezes their 2nd "birthright" (the other is the PC Operating System, I'd focussed on.) Microsoft achieves around 90% "Gross Margin" on two product lines (O/S and Office), and these lines carry the rest of the business. There is also the "Enterprise" division: they leverage these two product lines and add server software like O/S, Exchange and SQL Server. Perhaps Office 2007 was the zenith, even for Enterprises? Microsoft has never embraced the idea that products can be complete . To go forward, you can't add more frills. You have to completely reinvent/redefine the product or the field - like the iPhone. I can't do better than Wilcox's article - I suggest you read the link. For a quicker read, I've picked out what I see as the most salient points. There are two very good paras at the start and a cute l...

A friend sent me this link to a New York Times Op-Ed 'contribution'. Huge news... February 4, 2010 Op-Ed Contributor Microsoft’s Creative Destruction By DICK BRASS Dick Brass was a vice president at Microsoft from 1997 to 2004. This guy was a VP in the glory years - either side of Y2K, and before the 2004/5 Longhorn 'reset'. The failure to build the successor to XP was a breaking-point: the forced upgrade cycle was gone. He's likely to have a bunch of stock, or options, and a vested interest in the company's success/survival. His comments are likely to be both informed and as positive as they can be... My summary: Microsoft, he says baldly, "is struggling", "And yet it is failing, even as it reports record earnings." "Microsoft has become a clumsy, uncompetitive innovator." Despite many efforts, fine engineers, huge R&D and many "visionaries", it hasn't created anything substantial to replace it's two franchise...