Enterprise Pain Points

Marc Zeedar is writing a series on the differences between Apple and
Microsoft. It’s an interesting read. Not sure whether Marc is an Apple Fan Boy or Anti-Microsoft, but if you get past the zealousness, he makes a few interesting points.

A theme he reiterates across Part 1 and Part 2, is Microsoft’s inability to innovate. The idea that Bill Gates and his team show up in the office early in the morning, coffee in hand, WSJ Technology section in the other hand, flick on the lights and power up the copy machines is a pretty popular, if not accurate caricature of Microsoft.

I have my own opinions about the Microsoft empire (more to do with security, quality, human interface design, long story), but the idea that Microsoft is the Kinko’s of Technology isn’t exactly fair. In the industry that Apple and Microsoft play, if you try to innovate too quickly - you risk abandoning your installed base. Not purely a Microsoft/Apple problem, but a market leader problem in general. I digress.

So, why can’t Microsoft innovate? Should not monopoly profits equate to market leading innovation? Surely the billions Microsoft has in cash should be able to buy lots of innovators?

There are plenty of factors that might come into play singularly or in
combination…

• Pace of innovation vs. backward compatibility
• 40 Million lines of code (Windows XP)
• Corporate bureaucracy - i.e. turning the Titanic
• Monopolist mindset - i.e. maintain status-quo

You might think that innovation is a function of time and money. As time is constant, money would be the key variable. Let’s see, Microsoft has 45 billion dollars of cash in the bank, but yet, not considered an innovator. Microsoft announced a MP3 player recently. ZUNE is interesting but not innovative. In fact, pretty much the opposite. If ZUNE were released by any other company sans billion in marketing dollars, no one would care. Vista is interesting in a 2003-2004 kind-of-way, but not innovative.

So if money isn’t the driver of innovation, what is? It seems to me the difference is one of perspective. Having never met Steve Jobs or Bill
Gates, I can’t really tell you what their perspectives are, but from personal experience, it is a lot easier to innovate when you’re envisioning
technology as a means to an end, rather than for technology’s sake. When you are focused on the experience (or solution) - whether it’s the experience of listening to music, streaming movies from your computer, or making a phone call; you can find more ways to be innovative if you concentrate more on the solution, than the problem. My father use to repeat the cliché, “Spend 90% of your time on the solution, and 10% on the problem.” All things being equal, there’s more innovation in Cupertino than Redmond. Could this be the critical difference between Apple and Microsoft?

Might it be time for a culture change in Redmond? Bill give me a call, I can help…Spend more time on the solution…