Microsoft Creative Destruction
The author of the column is Dick Brass, vice president of Microsoft from 1997 to 2004.
Published February 4 in the NY Times.
Having admired the new Apple iPad, techno- gics began discussing Amazon’s future problems with selling e-books. But another question is much more important: why Microsoft - America’s most famous and thriving technology company - no longer shows us the technologies of the future, such as iPad tablet computers, Kindle e-books, BlackBerry smartphones or iPhones, Google search engine, iPod digital music systems and iTunes or popular web services Facebook and Twitter.
Some enjoy the suffering of Microsoft, because in recent years, this company has become popular to represent in the form of a conscious monopolist who refuses to admit his guilt. Like, the better if it disappears. But those of us who worked there know the company from the other side. In the worst case, we can say that it is really a monopolist, but by and large it is random, and deeply regretful of it. There are thousands of the smartest, most capable developers in the world. Microsoft has done more than any other company in the world to turn computers into affordable and affordable devices. The Windows operating system and the Office suite of Office applications are still completely dominant in their markets.
')
Executive Director Steve Ballmer continues to provide huge profits. In the past ten years alone, net income exceeded $ 100 billion, and this helped to ensure the well-being of Seattle, Washington State and the national economy as a whole. The company's founder, Bill Gates, was not only the most generous philanthropist in history, but also inspired thousands of his employees to do charity work themselves. No one in their right mind should want Microsoft to fail.
But the failure is still evident, despite the financial reports with record incomes. As one of the company's employees who, ten years ago, tried (generally unsuccessfully) to implement the ideas of tablet computers and e-books at Microsoft, I could say that the company trusted people like me too much, and we did not cope. But the decline of Microsoft is so strong and wide that it would be too impudent for me to take full responsibility for it.
Microsoft has become clumsy and unable to compete in innovation. They bullied her products, often unfairly, but sometimes quite reasonably. The image of the company has never recovered from the antitrust proceedings of the 90s. Her marketing has been completely ridiculous for years; remember the 2008 ad in which Bill Gates was forced to literally turn the back seat in front of the camera.
While Apple continues to increase its share in many markets, Microsoft has lost its advantage in the market of web browsers, high-end laptops and smartphones. Despite billions of investments, the Xbox lineup is still at best on par with competitors. The company initially ignored digital players, then acted uncertainly, until this business completely selected Apple.
Microsoft's huge profits ($ 6.7 billion in the last quarter) came almost entirely from Windows and Office, the first versions of which appeared decades ago. Like General Motors with its trucks and SUVs, Microsoft cannot rely on the same products forever. Probably the worst thing is that Microsoft is no longer considered the coolest and most advanced place for employment. From there began a steady outflow of the best and most talented employees.
What happened? Unlike other companies, Microsoft has not implemented a real innovation system. Some of my former colleagues even say that she created a system that in reality suppresses innovation. Despite the work of one of the largest and most efficient corporate R & D around the world, and the luxury of having not just one, but three technology directors at once, the company methodically brings all its ideas to the future, its employees, down the drain.
For example, at the very beginning of my work at Microsoft, our group, consisting of very competent graphics experts, invented a new way of displaying text on the screen, which we called ClearType. The idea was to use separate color pixels of the LCD (sub-pixel rendering) to make the font much more legible when reading from the screen. We created ClearType specifically for selling e-books, and this gave Microsoft a huge potential advantage for each mobile device with a screen. But this caused dissatisfaction with other divisions of Microsoft, to which our project fell out of place.
Developers from the Windows division have announced that the monitor may fail when using this technology. The head of the Office unit said that the ClearType fonts are vague and his head starts to hurt from them. The vice president of the handheld device division said bluntly: he will support and use ClearType only if I put the project and all programmers under his control. As a result, even despite wide public recognition, internal promotion and patents, ten years passed before the fully functional version of ClearType was finally built into Windows.
Another example. When we created a tablet computer in 2001, the. The vice-president of the Office division suddenly decided that he did not like the concept. The tablet worked with the stylus, and he preferred the keyboard, and considered our efforts doomed. To ensure this, he refused to modify the office programs to work correctly on the tablet. So if you wanted to enter a number in a cell or correct a word in a letter, you had to write it in a special pop-up window, which then transmitted information to Office. Annoyingly, awkwardly and slowly.
So I’ll say it again, even though our tablets were vigorously supported by high management, and the development cost hundreds of millions of dollars, essentially they were the victim of sabotage. Even today, it’s still not possible to work with Office directly from a Tablet PC. And despite reliable information that Apple will launch a tablet this year, the relevant Microsoft division has been disbanded.
Not all the troubles of Microsoft due to internecine disassembly. Part of the problem is the historical propensity to create (very profitable) software without developing (highly risky) hardware. It made economic sense when the company was founded in 1975, but today, for this reason, it has become much more difficult to create tightly integrated, superbly designed products like the iPhone or TiVo. And yes, part of the problem lies in the clear message that Microsoft received as a result of the antitrust case. Time was also chosen unfortunate, compared with competitors: too early in the case of Web TV, too late in the case of the iPod.
Internal rivalry is commonplace in large companies. It can be reasonably encouraged to create a competition of ideas. Problems begin when rivalry gets out of control and becomes destructive. At Microsoft, this situation has led to the creation of a dysfunctional corporate culture in which large, authoritative groups are allowed to oppress developing development teams, downplay their efforts, unfairly take resources from them and eventually bring them to destruction. It is no coincidence that almost all heads of music, e-books, phones, online services, search, and tablet computers have left Microsoft over the past decade.
As a result, although the company has a truly amazing past and the envy of a prosperous present, until Microsoft returns the spark of creativity, the question of its future remains open.
Afterword from the translator. This article caused a great resonance in the IT community, and Microsoft was forced to publish an official response .
Published February 4 in the NY Times.
Having admired the new Apple iPad, techno- gics began discussing Amazon’s future problems with selling e-books. But another question is much more important: why Microsoft - America’s most famous and thriving technology company - no longer shows us the technologies of the future, such as iPad tablet computers, Kindle e-books, BlackBerry smartphones or iPhones, Google search engine, iPod digital music systems and iTunes or popular web services Facebook and Twitter.
Some enjoy the suffering of Microsoft, because in recent years, this company has become popular to represent in the form of a conscious monopolist who refuses to admit his guilt. Like, the better if it disappears. But those of us who worked there know the company from the other side. In the worst case, we can say that it is really a monopolist, but by and large it is random, and deeply regretful of it. There are thousands of the smartest, most capable developers in the world. Microsoft has done more than any other company in the world to turn computers into affordable and affordable devices. The Windows operating system and the Office suite of Office applications are still completely dominant in their markets.
')
Executive Director Steve Ballmer continues to provide huge profits. In the past ten years alone, net income exceeded $ 100 billion, and this helped to ensure the well-being of Seattle, Washington State and the national economy as a whole. The company's founder, Bill Gates, was not only the most generous philanthropist in history, but also inspired thousands of his employees to do charity work themselves. No one in their right mind should want Microsoft to fail.
But the failure is still evident, despite the financial reports with record incomes. As one of the company's employees who, ten years ago, tried (generally unsuccessfully) to implement the ideas of tablet computers and e-books at Microsoft, I could say that the company trusted people like me too much, and we did not cope. But the decline of Microsoft is so strong and wide that it would be too impudent for me to take full responsibility for it.
Microsoft has become clumsy and unable to compete in innovation. They bullied her products, often unfairly, but sometimes quite reasonably. The image of the company has never recovered from the antitrust proceedings of the 90s. Her marketing has been completely ridiculous for years; remember the 2008 ad in which Bill Gates was forced to literally turn the back seat in front of the camera.
While Apple continues to increase its share in many markets, Microsoft has lost its advantage in the market of web browsers, high-end laptops and smartphones. Despite billions of investments, the Xbox lineup is still at best on par with competitors. The company initially ignored digital players, then acted uncertainly, until this business completely selected Apple.
Microsoft's huge profits ($ 6.7 billion in the last quarter) came almost entirely from Windows and Office, the first versions of which appeared decades ago. Like General Motors with its trucks and SUVs, Microsoft cannot rely on the same products forever. Probably the worst thing is that Microsoft is no longer considered the coolest and most advanced place for employment. From there began a steady outflow of the best and most talented employees.
What happened? Unlike other companies, Microsoft has not implemented a real innovation system. Some of my former colleagues even say that she created a system that in reality suppresses innovation. Despite the work of one of the largest and most efficient corporate R & D around the world, and the luxury of having not just one, but three technology directors at once, the company methodically brings all its ideas to the future, its employees, down the drain.
For example, at the very beginning of my work at Microsoft, our group, consisting of very competent graphics experts, invented a new way of displaying text on the screen, which we called ClearType. The idea was to use separate color pixels of the LCD (sub-pixel rendering) to make the font much more legible when reading from the screen. We created ClearType specifically for selling e-books, and this gave Microsoft a huge potential advantage for each mobile device with a screen. But this caused dissatisfaction with other divisions of Microsoft, to which our project fell out of place.
Developers from the Windows division have announced that the monitor may fail when using this technology. The head of the Office unit said that the ClearType fonts are vague and his head starts to hurt from them. The vice president of the handheld device division said bluntly: he will support and use ClearType only if I put the project and all programmers under his control. As a result, even despite wide public recognition, internal promotion and patents, ten years passed before the fully functional version of ClearType was finally built into Windows.
Another example. When we created a tablet computer in 2001, the. The vice-president of the Office division suddenly decided that he did not like the concept. The tablet worked with the stylus, and he preferred the keyboard, and considered our efforts doomed. To ensure this, he refused to modify the office programs to work correctly on the tablet. So if you wanted to enter a number in a cell or correct a word in a letter, you had to write it in a special pop-up window, which then transmitted information to Office. Annoyingly, awkwardly and slowly.
So I’ll say it again, even though our tablets were vigorously supported by high management, and the development cost hundreds of millions of dollars, essentially they were the victim of sabotage. Even today, it’s still not possible to work with Office directly from a Tablet PC. And despite reliable information that Apple will launch a tablet this year, the relevant Microsoft division has been disbanded.
Not all the troubles of Microsoft due to internecine disassembly. Part of the problem is the historical propensity to create (very profitable) software without developing (highly risky) hardware. It made economic sense when the company was founded in 1975, but today, for this reason, it has become much more difficult to create tightly integrated, superbly designed products like the iPhone or TiVo. And yes, part of the problem lies in the clear message that Microsoft received as a result of the antitrust case. Time was also chosen unfortunate, compared with competitors: too early in the case of Web TV, too late in the case of the iPod.
Internal rivalry is commonplace in large companies. It can be reasonably encouraged to create a competition of ideas. Problems begin when rivalry gets out of control and becomes destructive. At Microsoft, this situation has led to the creation of a dysfunctional corporate culture in which large, authoritative groups are allowed to oppress developing development teams, downplay their efforts, unfairly take resources from them and eventually bring them to destruction. It is no coincidence that almost all heads of music, e-books, phones, online services, search, and tablet computers have left Microsoft over the past decade.
As a result, although the company has a truly amazing past and the envy of a prosperous present, until Microsoft returns the spark of creativity, the question of its future remains open.
Afterword from the translator. This article caused a great resonance in the IT community, and Microsoft was forced to publish an official response .
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/83238/
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