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How Infighting Hampers Innovation At Microsoft
Garabito writes "Dick Brass, former vice-president at Microsoft, published an op-ed in The New York Times, where he states that 'Microsoft has become a clumsy, uncompetitive innovator' and how 'it has lost share in Web browsers, high-end laptops and smartphones.' He attributes this situation to the lack of a true system for innovation at Microsoft. Some former employees argue that Microsoft has a system to thwart innovation. He tells how promising and innovative technologies like ClearType and the original TabletPC concept become crippled and sabotaged internally, by groups and divisions that felt threatened by them."
Large institutions hamper creativity, innovation...
-I'm just sayin'
And cooperation would make Microsoft more competitive? This is a clear example of how competition doesn't produce excellence, cooperation does. If competition really DID produce excellence, then all companies would be organized with multiply redundant, competing internal departments. Obviously, that's not the case: internally, companies function cooperatively, and those that foster too much internal competition ultimately fail.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
1. profit 2. ??? 3. innovation
Microsoft has become the Company they scorned in the 90's... IBM. I wonder how many IBM'ers are laughing at Microsoft now that the shoe is on the other foot?
http://www.betanews.com/joewilcox/article/Apple-has-91-of-market-for-1000-PCs-says-NPD/1248313624
Not just laptops but all high end computers. Sure, some of the blame lies with the hardware manufacturers too but a lot of it is Microsoft.
And this notion suprises anyone? It's not unlike any large family where one kid stuffs a sock in anothers mouth, someone taddles on Johnny, or another dumps their sister from the wagon. Turf wars exist everywhere; the challenge is to minimize them. But... How do you do that when competition is king? Where wining the battle is put before what is good, just, or honorable? Just asking?
In plain terms, the isolated Tablet was little more than a crippled laptop, and the isolated Pocket PC was almost completely useless. Attach them to a network, though, and they become something magical. Something none of us working on them was wise enough to foresee.
--Greg
In many ways whether they are 'rip-offs' doesn't matter in this context. What matters is that infighting at Microsoft prevented them from leveraging these technologies and actually making a product that people want. If Balmer really wanted to change this culture of infighting, then he has everything to do so, the problem he either doesn't care or doesn't want do what is needed.
Microsoft has plenty of potential, but it needs to put these smart minds in place and tell them that its not the department that counts, but the company. Everyone within the company should take the ideas within the company and use them to do something useful.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
To name a couple...
C#
MSSQL
Microsoft produces some amazing and refined technology in key areas especially when the top people (Anders Hejlsberg, Jim Gray) in their field are running these programs with unfettered control.
It is my understanding that it is common belief and practice to motivate employees by creating a competitive environment. But a lot of companies take this to mean "within the company". Well, if you create a win lose situation, there will always be losers, and if it is all happening inside the company, you're forcing everyone to concentrate on fighting with one another, and inflicting harm to other parts of the company. In biology, this would be a disease.
And in any great competition, you will always have your dirty players, your cheaters, and those who thrive at politics and manipulating the minds of those around them. This is a lot of wasted energy that otherwise could be put towards improving something or creating value within the business. Not to mention, true craftsmen thrive on isolation and focus, and are easily slain with swords. That is why you should never pit your sales department (soldiers) with your dev department (architects), because if you've hired the right people your sales department will always win.
At the end of the day, it is up to the "parent" to know what they are doing, and to put up the walls that help channel energy in all the right directions. Soldiers go outside the company to fight their wars. Developers just sit back and fight deadlines.
If you do compete, compete with your competitors. If you do have internal competitions, make sure no one loses. You can make it a win-win, or just a single win, situation, like rewards for certain targets. But never leave room for open politics or cat fighting within departments or between employees. Just create a total dictatorship where there is one leader who knows what they are doing, and is responsible for everyone else. Democracies may allow everyone to stand equally, but they are the worst at getting anything done. And no one needs to be equal in the workplace.
COM/Active-X and COM+ were innovative. Sure they borrowed a lot from DCE and CORBA, but then Apple borrowed a lot from Xerox PARC to build the Mac, and from Amazon for the iPad.
That example perhaps also shows why Microsoft's senior management team is so cautious - when you invent an entire infrastructure in your development labs, there are many things that you won't get right the first or second time, and you'll be stuck supporting your mistakes for backwards compatibility. There will be embarrassing moments, as when the Quicken CEO called a press conference telling people not to use Active-X for security reasons. You might end up with an architecture where "you can't get there from here". It's much easier to learn from a competitor's good ideas and mistakes, as Microsoft did with the successor to COM.
Other than Xerox PARC (that gave us the GUI, Ethernet, laser printing, etc), name any other company that hasn't done the same? Apple is as guilty, if not more so than Microsoft. They didn't invent the GUI, or the Mouse. They didn't invent the MP3 player, or the Smart phone. They didn't invent the touch screen. They didn't invent the Laptop or the Tablet form-factor, etc, etc, the list goes on and on. They did, however invent Firewire - I'll give them that.
This happens a lot with any large company where revenue is dependent on keeping a few cash cow products generating income. First, you don't want to do anything to upset what's making you money, so you start really playing it safe. Vista was a horrible flop, but Microsoft spent a ton of time and money polishing it up and rolling out Windows 7. But imagine Microsoft throwing out all the 20 years of Windows backward compatibility and totally starting over. It won't happen until the product absolutely cannot be supported anymore. Windows 7 including "XP mode" is a really good example - they desparately want to avoid angering enterprise customers who are still running custom software that relies on Windows 98's quirks 12 years later. Heck, there's still a couple of places I know running the core of their business using a 16-bit screen scraper app and an equally-old terminal emulator!
Second, you have the organizational problem. Microsoft is huge, so huge that enterprise customers need a Technical Account Manager just to handle their support calls and make sure they can find resources. I know they have a Research arm, but I can't see how an individual developer's idea might possibly make it high enough up the food chain to make much difference. To make things worse, the management structure is probably so deep within product lines that multiple product VPs are clamoring for Ballmer's attention. These guys are fighting for their jobs, so I imagine there's tons of poltics involved. I would bet that early-90's Microsoft was a lot more collaborative.
I definitely see Microsoft progressing towards IBM and Oracle territory as far as products go. They'll deliver nice safe products for business, but the consumer will be left out. XBox is another story...but just look at the mess that is Zune!
I've actually worked for large organizations, both IT and non-IT. (I haven't worked for a software company.) I can tell you that smaller organizations are better, up to a point. Once you get too small, say in the medium business category, you have to deal personally with a potentially psychopathic owner or CEO. If they're benevolent, it's great, but most entrepreneur-y types are nuts to begin with, and tend to treat employees like "the help." But once you grow too big, such that communication becomes a problem and politics start entering into every decision, the situation can be just as bad.
But yeah, I can't see Microsoft creating another "category-killer" product with their current structure. My dealings with them as a Premier Support customer have been interesting....it takes them several days to admit that a problem exists, log it, and "officially" tell me that they're working on a hotfix.
I got to see this first-hand in my last job. The place started off like a startup, got big, and all of a sudden people were doing the CYA thing that I've seen all over the large-business world. Everyone was way too panicked about getting chewed out by our crazy CIO to be focused on doing good work.
Everyone seems to agree that Microsoft isn't an innovator, so who is?
You're not going to get a fair answer to that question on Slashdot.
I mean, Apple completely stole Time Machine from Microsoft's already-implemented Shadow Copy feature, were they derided as copy-cats? No. But Microsoft uses a transparency effect in Aero just similar to a transparency effect in OS X, and suddenly there's huge posters accusing Microsoft of being nothing but a copy machine.
To actually answer the question, Microsoft hasn't innovated anything truly new in decades? I'd say the Office 2007 Ribbon interface is certainly something truly new*. I'd say that the fact that Firefox 4's UI looks a hell of a lot like Internet Explorer 8's UI probably means something. (To be fair, it might just mean both of them cribbed from Google. But that's still something. :) Fast user switching was in Windows before OS X or Linux had it. (If Linux has it now?)
In the Enterprise, there's Sharepoint, which isn't a completely new idea, but combines several existing ideas in a very useful fashion. There's Microsoft's dominance in data processing technologies with their OLAP tools. (Actually, I just Googled that and it looks like they bought that from another company-- oops.)
Looking at a different area... I'd certainly say Xbox Live was innovative in many ways. I'd say putting a HD inside a game console was a pretty innovative idea, as was the entire concept of Xbox Live Arcade (especially since all the competitors in that space have ripped it off.) And what about the Arc Mouse for laptops? That thing's pretty damned slick and innovative. There's the Surface table/technology.
In short, Microsoft might not be the most innovative company in the world (although who is?) But don't pretend they aren't doing anything, either-- you're only deluding yourself.
* Of course at this point the Slashdotter chimes in with "the Ribbon sucks! I hate the Ribbon! It takes 46 years to figure out how to save a file now! etc!" That misses the point that the Ribbon is, in fact, new.
Comment of the year
ClearType had plenty of prior art, so I don't think it counts as significant innovation.
Like what?
Font smoothing had been done before, but nothing that made use of subpixel rendering. At least, not to the best of my knowledge... please correct me with a citation. (Or, alternatively, stop spreading bullcrap when you have no citation. Thank you.)
Comment of the year
First, lets establish that Microsoft (I am a former Microsoft employee myself) couldn't give a crap about innovating, its an exercise best left to those unconcerned about profits. Those of us who succeeded at Microsoft understood that our job was how to create/copy/simulate/obfuscate in the name of market leadership.
Its so tiring to see so many still willing to attach these lofty goals like 'innovation' to what is a really simple business challenge. Nobody (well a few, but they always leave to write these crappy articles) takes their Microsoft check to the bank feeling guilty and with less self-esteem because their high-marketshare product line isnt innovating the fuck out of technology.
Remember the line about the bear: "I dont have to outrun the bear, I just have to outrun you"?
That is how it is at Microsoft. I worked in the Exchange group, and later Visual Studio. Our job was NOT to come up with mind-blowing shit that glowed in the dark, it was to build products that give people reason to buy ours instead of THEIR's. Exchange never had to be slick, it just had to be better than Lotus Notes. SIMPLE.
Was Exchange innovative? Fuck no. Was it better than NOTES? Fuck yes.
That is the software business. We were never about design awards, and "oh we are so forward thinking", and all that shit.
Microsoft is, was, and always will be about profit for shareholders, bitches. Nothing more, nothing less.
Yes, I did say "Microsoft Research has been doing interesting stuff in the past decade or so, but that's more a sign of *increasing* innovation at Microsoft, if anything." TFA was complaining that Microsoft had *become* mired down in infighting. Implying it had been better in some golden age I can't quite remember.
And most of what Microsoft Research does never gets from the "car show" to the "showroom floor".
"...when the competition becomes uncontrolled and destructive." --TFA
TFA gives examples such as the head of the Office team expressing his dislike of tablet computers by refusing to integrate Office with the tablet UI, or the fellow who would support ClearType, but only if the personnel who developed it were put under his management.
I find this insight highly ironic. Hey, they were only emulating MS's behavior with respect to its competition, right?
So...
But the much more important question is why Microsoft, America’s most famous and prosperous technology company, no longer brings us the future
Microsoft never really innovated per se; they mostly marketed and promoted lesser-known technologies (CP/M as DOS, OS/2 as Windows) and tweaked them heavily to make them business-friendly. Gates, Ballmer and crew got ridiculously lucky too, but that's another story (which predates me anyway).
Good riddance if it fails.
Not quite. Imagine if Apple came to the forefront. We'd all have to be running THEIR hardware and be completely subservient to their business model, which is secretive and limiting at best. Perhaps Apple would be even more draconian with competition out of the picture. At least I can install Windows on any PC and expect it to work; can't say the same for OS X (and don't count Hackintoshes either; they aren't supported!).
It employs thousands of the smartest, most capable engineers in the world. More than any other firm, it made using computers both ubiquitous and affordable...Microsoft has become a clumsy, uncompetitive innovator. Its products are lampooned, often unfairly but sometimes with good reason.
Same story for IBM, Intel et al. They each have a market which they completely dominate in (IBM in the mainframe and support space; Intel in the microprocessor space). At that point, they don't need to innovate unless they really want to...and if times get really tough and enough loopholes exist, those companies can buy out their competition (Microsoft/IBM) or steamroll them (Intel vs AMD).
While Apple continues to gain market share in many products, Microsoft has lost share in Web browsers, high-end laptops and smartphones.
But the key thing to keep in mind is that Microsoft's bread and butter isn't in the consumer space. Like IBM, Microsoft stays afloat by marketing mostly to the business sector, who not only has (much) more money to give, but is also much more resistant to change. In fact, Microsoft spends TONS and TONS of money figuring out how to best cater their business customers by running all sorts of research, field tests and such. (A good example of this is the Ribbon interface in Office 2007, which was the result of an academic study looking to figure out how people doing work interface with GUIs best.)
Special attention should also be placed on Apple's main consumers. Where is one more likely to see iPhones and Macbooks: at a posh cafe in New York City or in a farm in Tulsa, OK? I'll make the postulation that the core of Apple's audience is young folk who want something simple, svelte and integral to their lifestyles. While there are certainly diehards and fanboys, many of those folks will jump to the "next big thing" just like they did from PCs to Macs (or regular smartphones to iPhones or whatever) just because it's big and happening. Sure, there are lots of youths in the US, but their buying power is unmatched to even a few of the top (or middle) companies on the Fortune 100.
The article is an interesting read, but I think the author misses the business motive behind today's Microsoft. Back when Microsoft started (which, again, predates me), computers were constantly innovating. I'd even argue that computers were still innovations at that point, since Microsoft gained popularity at a time when computers were just starting to move from the mainframe room to the security's desk. I think the biggest mistake that Microsoft made was not paying enough attention to the importance of the Internet over the last few years. Sure, they'll be coming out with Office 2010 and Office web apps, and they already came out with Bing, but they are still playing catch up when they could've taken this space by storm years ago...
There biggest problem seems to be the management method used when new ideas are presented. They apparently aggressively challenge any new idea and force the presenter to actively defend their stance and provide fiscal justifications. This of course immediately cuts off a lot of the more creative less combative types who simply more to another company with those ideas. The creates an environment where it isn't the best ideas that win simply an environment where the best liars win, only to see those lies fail as actual products.
The most adamant proof of M$'s failure in the nurturing and promotion of creativity, the abject failure of MSN to generate a profit, a content portal that is totally dependent on creativity and the ability of staff to effectively express themselves. All they seem to be able to do is let Ballmer come up with some new whacked idea from rebranding the search component of a web portal, whilst the portal continues to bleed capital ('BING' seriously WTF).
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
And in response to Dick’s comment about Tablets and Office, I’ll simply point to this product called OneNote that was essentially created for the Tablet and is a key part of Office today
Tablet Team: Wow, Office Team, thanks. OneNote! Wow! What say you toss in Works and Clippy and we'll get out of your hair. What do you think?
Office Team: Enjoy the OneNote. And wash my car.
Telus is the land line company that offers voice, internet, television. Telus MOBILE are the cell phone creeps. I'm not even on their network and had to fight $600 in failed data charges. Yes, Telus MOBILE sucks, but the land line telco seems okay!
I doubt that. I would credit Commodore far more; they brought computing to the masses. MS's only real semi-claim to fame is integrating the products in the Office suite for better info sharing. Whether sufficient integration would have happened without MS is hard to say.
Author is obviously not a slashdotter.
Same with me. Perhaps I could grow used to it, but it would take a while. Aliased (stair-stepped) fonts are ugly, but at least their edges are sharp. The slightly fuzzy rainbowy edges of ClearType can be hard on the eyes. It also makes copy-and-pasting of images across computers problematic. As a personal choice, fine; but many wouldn't miss it.
Table-ized A.I.
Zune is a good example. They came up with a solid product pretty quickly when they put their minds to it.
Wouldn't a much more "solid" product have been a device that wasn't aimed right at a rapidly collapsing market and instead was ahead of the game?
A zPhone around the time the Zune came out, using XNA to program it - that might have been something. It could have leveraged stuff they had on hand very quickly to at least stave off the iPhone. Instead they have a tiny fraction of a shrinking standalone media player market, and years later no answer to the phone space, at all.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Look at the screenshots of Bluefish from 2004: http://web.archive.org/web/20040715074025/bluefish.openoffice.nl/screenshots.html
The bluefish editor has been using contextual tabs since 2000 or so. Ribbon is new for office, but contextual layout with a tabbing interface is not new at all.
At the same time, you have to admit that Wal*Mart is posting the highest retail growth numbers in the country, despite having annual sales that are greater than next four companies combined. The fact that they've been able to maintain this growth for such a long time means that they're doing something right.
We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it