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Ballmer on Innovation
prostoalex writes "Robert Scoble interviewed Steve Ballmer on the topics of blogging, innovation at Microsoft, Microsoft's work with developers and other things. Video is available in WMV format." From the interview: "Did IBM out innovate us? I don't think so. I don't think they've done much interesting at all. What about Oracle? I don't think they've done much innovative at all. What about the open source guys? Ah, the business model is interesting but we haven't seen much in the way of technical innovation. People cite Google. Google has done some interesting stuff."
you know, i really don't think he knows what that word means:
innovate: 1. To begin or introduce (something new) for or as if for the first time. 2. To begin or introduce something new.
what has microsoft introduced lately that is so new? i honestly don't know: i haven't used microsoft products seriously in 10 years. they're not even on my radar any more.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
just think about it, how each and every company always claims absolute leadership and innovation, market-leadership and to be the utmost and best of there is out there...
The reason they do that is best explained by the man who formalized that concept. Nazi Germany's minister of propaganda, Josef Goebbels once said: "if you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth".
Corporations (and, gee, governments too) these days use exactly that same technique, whether it's in PR statements, interviews, punditry or advertising. They found it's easier to buy time with VC money and try to let the lies sink in in the general public to get people to buy their products, than putting out actually good products. There are exceptions of course, but that's the rule these days. And don't forget the added benefit of workers buying the lies too and working harder as a result...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Oh Please! Microsoft did not "out-innovate" Netscape by any stretch of the imagination. The only reason IE took over market share is BECAUSE IT WAS INCLUDED FOR FREE IN EVERY OS IN 95% OF THE COMPUTERS.
Duh. But I guess you're just a Microsoft fanboy.. *shudder*.
--- witty signature
Ballmer's not talking about hardware innovation obviously and he's hardly even talking about software innovation. He really means "marketshare" when he means innovation: the ability to bring the market together under one platform and to create a huge environment for 3rd party solutions on top of that.
I can't speak for their marketers or upper-management, but I've met with and interfaced with a couple hundred employees from Microsoft over the past decade and I'd say 90% of them have been more passionate, smarter, and more 'innovative' than the average employee I've met at any other computer software-related business.*
Furthermore, it's amazing how passionate many are about their particular product line. Shit, just read some of their blogs and you'll see how much many care about the products they work on, the user experience, and so on. So saying 'the literally don't care' is about as far from reality as I can imagine. So either you are psychotic or ignorant or the people at Microsoft you've interfaced with personally happen to be vastly different from those that I've met/socialized with/worked with. (And I'm sure you have had the interactions and experience to make such claims as you did in your post, no? Or are you just saying this based on the fact that your Win98 box blue screens once a day? Yeah....)
* - the majority of people I've met/worked with at Microsoft have been either in the Office team or ASP.NET team, so my observations may be skewed if just cool people work there.
I could not justify my existence if I were a turkey farmer. Would I terminate myself? Undoubtably, yes.
Microsoft is a company with, what, 30,000 employees? Not a single one of them 'gives a hoot?'
That's right. Otherwise we wouldn't be seeing problems such as IE being "integrated" with the OS.
Having worked at MS in 98/99, I can say that "giving a hoot" doesn't amount to much. I was part of several projects where the majority of the team wanted to do something great, but red tape and politics got in the way.
At one point, after months of upper management arguing about how to do it, I rewrote the FastCounter interface over a weekend. I presented it, the team loved it. Yet it sat on the shelf. Too many people wanted to prove they were in control. Eventually I left. But a lot of good people stayed on.
Anyways, corporations are a group, not an individual. There are many great individuals at Microsoft. But as a group, as a corporation, their greatness can get lost.
Cheers.
Where do you get your information? I don't think IBM invented *ANY* of those things. They may have been the first company to bring products with those features to market, but that's the same thing Microsoft does.
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