who says msft can't dance?
vinay kamat
Microsoft is a peculiar giant. It dominates the desktop, your dashboard to the digital world, with its software prowess, pricing skill, distribution reach, and branding muscle. But that does not scare away innovative challengers.
Yet, when Microsoft celebrated its 30th birthday on Friday, it was a landmark. For, resilience and learning have been its best defences against competitors as insanely great as Apple, Netscape, and Google.
To defend Microsoft is to defend the status quo. That is what Microsoft’s PC-centric world has become. As futurologist George Gilder said in 2000, “the PC revolution has stiffened into an establishment”. It is an establishment that has become synonymous with Windows, Microsoft’s cash-cow. When nimble newcomers were rolling out products using the web as a platform, Microsoft was busy shielding its turf: the desktop.
Yet what looks like a turf fight is actually a strategy. If competitors carve out niches, Microsoft creates a software supermarket. Put simply, Microsoft layers its core Windows with innovations ranging from browser to spreadsheet to search. None of these is strictly an innovation but when they are bundled onto Windows, they create a new experience. Today, Microsoft’s software powers more than 90 per cent of the world’s PCs.
Bill Gates, who reinvents Microsoft every time it falls behind in the web race, may never be credited for creating a truly great company. Perceived variously as a software monopoly, an “evil empire”, a start-up gobbler, a geek foe, Gates’ Microsoft is a loner. Yet what differentiates Gates from other great leaders is his frozen resolve: it is a quest to create a learning entity.
To imitate is to learn. In the disruptive world of technology, only those that decipher the competition survive. Indeed, Microsoft has been able to create a culture which helps the corporation to quickly morph itself into a project the moment a rival product emerges on its radar screen. See how Microsoft has kept pace with Sony’s PlayStation with its Xbox gaming console. In both gaming and search, Gates is still behind. But few believe he will remain a pygmy when Microsoft turns 32.
Despite its strengths, the $40-billion Microsoft has quite a few things to fret about. Its stock, at $25.3, is uninspiring; its product flow is drying; it is still not intuitive enough in spotting web-driven killer apps. Free and flexible Linux software now threatens the flagship — Windows. Unlikely competitors are emerging in the world of convergence, where gadgets and formats will have to shake hands. We are already seeing tomorrow’s living rooms through Nintendo’s GameCube, Sony’s PlayStation, and Microsoft’s Xbox. The future, as Gates points out, is an “ecosystem of technologies.” Will Microsoft create that ecosystem or will it be just a part of that network?
Along with Apple, Sony, Nokia, Samsung, Google, and Yahoo, Microsoft is faced with an unfamiliar future. Technologies are converging but nobody knows for sure what the dominant technology, or the overall user architecture, will be like.
As Lou Gerstner, the CEO who taught IBM to dance, puts it: “It isn’t a question of whether elephants can prevail over ants. It is a question of whether a particular elephant can dance.” Microsoft can be that particular elephant if it cranks up its product pipeline. That’s one way to leverage size, breadth and depth when you are 30. With an R&D budget of $6.8 billion and cash reserves of $40 billion, Microsoft has the firepower to define the future.
In fact, Microsoft’s success is embedded in its own strategic code: just be ahead of the herd. It sounds convincing, if not disruptive. It is herd logic, not instinct. But that’s one way to tread into unknown terrain.
Microsoft is a peculiar giant. It dominates the desktop, your dashboard to the digital world, with its software prowess, pricing skill, distribution reach, and branding muscle. But that does not scare away innovative challengers.
Yet, when Microsoft celebrated its 30th birthday on Friday, it was a landmark. For, resilience and learning have been its best defences against competitors as insanely great as Apple, Netscape, and Google.
To defend Microsoft is to defend the status quo. That is what Microsoft’s PC-centric world has become. As futurologist George Gilder said in 2000, “the PC revolution has stiffened into an establishment”. It is an establishment that has become synonymous with Windows, Microsoft’s cash-cow. When nimble newcomers were rolling out products using the web as a platform, Microsoft was busy shielding its turf: the desktop.
Yet what looks like a turf fight is actually a strategy. If competitors carve out niches, Microsoft creates a software supermarket. Put simply, Microsoft layers its core Windows with innovations ranging from browser to spreadsheet to search. None of these is strictly an innovation but when they are bundled onto Windows, they create a new experience. Today, Microsoft’s software powers more than 90 per cent of the world’s PCs.
Bill Gates, who reinvents Microsoft every time it falls behind in the web race, may never be credited for creating a truly great company. Perceived variously as a software monopoly, an “evil empire”, a start-up gobbler, a geek foe, Gates’ Microsoft is a loner. Yet what differentiates Gates from other great leaders is his frozen resolve: it is a quest to create a learning entity.
To imitate is to learn. In the disruptive world of technology, only those that decipher the competition survive. Indeed, Microsoft has been able to create a culture which helps the corporation to quickly morph itself into a project the moment a rival product emerges on its radar screen. See how Microsoft has kept pace with Sony’s PlayStation with its Xbox gaming console. In both gaming and search, Gates is still behind. But few believe he will remain a pygmy when Microsoft turns 32.
Despite its strengths, the $40-billion Microsoft has quite a few things to fret about. Its stock, at $25.3, is uninspiring; its product flow is drying; it is still not intuitive enough in spotting web-driven killer apps. Free and flexible Linux software now threatens the flagship — Windows. Unlikely competitors are emerging in the world of convergence, where gadgets and formats will have to shake hands. We are already seeing tomorrow’s living rooms through Nintendo’s GameCube, Sony’s PlayStation, and Microsoft’s Xbox. The future, as Gates points out, is an “ecosystem of technologies.” Will Microsoft create that ecosystem or will it be just a part of that network?
Along with Apple, Sony, Nokia, Samsung, Google, and Yahoo, Microsoft is faced with an unfamiliar future. Technologies are converging but nobody knows for sure what the dominant technology, or the overall user architecture, will be like.
As Lou Gerstner, the CEO who taught IBM to dance, puts it: “It isn’t a question of whether elephants can prevail over ants. It is a question of whether a particular elephant can dance.” Microsoft can be that particular elephant if it cranks up its product pipeline. That’s one way to leverage size, breadth and depth when you are 30. With an R&D budget of $6.8 billion and cash reserves of $40 billion, Microsoft has the firepower to define the future.
In fact, Microsoft’s success is embedded in its own strategic code: just be ahead of the herd. It sounds convincing, if not disruptive. It is herd logic, not instinct. But that’s one way to tread into unknown terrain.
posted by vinay kamat at 5:58 AM
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