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The Memo That Spawned Microsoft Research
An anonymous reader writes "In 1991, Microsoft executive Nathan Myhrvold wrote a 21-page memo to Bill Gates, laying out a plan to create what would become Microsoft Research. Here is the previously unpublished memo and some analysis, along with the original slides that Myhrvold used to pitch the idea to Microsoft's top brass. With the future of Microsoft now in question, it's interesting to see how forward-thinking the company was 20 years ago. It even foresaw how pitfalls in tech transfer, organizational structure, and product R&D could make it fall behind future competitors---who would turn out to be Google, Apple, and Amazon in search, mobile devices, and cloud computing."
I don't know if it was their idea from the start, but MSR is hugely different from other companies' R&D. They operate more like a university. Researchers are free to work on anything they want, without consideration to whether it will directly effect a Microsoft product or not. It is one of the few places left outside academia where researchers can do basic research in computer science.
but it only works if you follow through on that knowledge to get an early foothold. You can identify as many future trends as you want without effectively getting to market early enough for it to matter with a good enough product to stick. The only thing that accomplishes is it gives you the ability to say "I knew that was coming!" And it's not just those who don't get into the market. It's also those who don't keep up with the competition. Palm and Blackberry offered the most widely used products of their type at one point, and now people giggle if you still have one.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
Comparing Microsoft then and now and you've got to make a number of comparisons on why they grew back then compared to being stagnant as week old molasses now.
No stack ranking. Employees could focus on their job instead of everyone else's job.
More risk taking. They were willing to try new products without worrying nearly as much about eating into their own sales for another product.
Diversity. This was when Windows NT 3.1 was about to be released and it supported DEC Alpha as well as MIPS CPU's.
Mind-share. They realized mind share was more important than an iron fisted DRM approach and didn't get absurd with DRM.
Cheaper. At that time Unix workstations were a fair bit more expensive than Windows based computers and Microsoft was actually the cheaper option for the masses.
Options. You could run just about anything you wanted with their common platform.
I've got to imagine that I'm far from the only person that misses Microsoft from the days of old, before they became soul crushing monopoly that destroyed innovation at every opportunity. Would you believe people actually camped out overnight for Windows 95 and stores opened up at midnight just to sell it?
Microsoft has since declared war on their employees, vendors, professionals, OEM's and just about everyone else in the industry. Nowadays they pull stunts like the Windows RT walled garden and call that diversity. Microsoft used to be a great company, but today that's as much history as the DEC Alpha.
I don't know if it was their idea from the start, but MSR is hugely different from other companies' R&D. They operate more like a university. Researchers are free to work on anything they want, without consideration to whether it will directly effect a Microsoft product or not. It is one of the few places left outside academia where researchers can do basic research in computer science.
I have no way to know if that's right or not, but I'm willing to concede that it's right. I wonder if the problem was that they accomplished nothing of value or if they did actually come up with great ideas, but the non-R&D management above them squelched them. In any event, Microsoft has always struck me as a reactionary rather than visionary, which is exactly why they are pursuing their current strategy of trying to become major players in phones and tablets. Microsoft just waits to see where everybody else in the industry is going and then they follow them and try to pretend that they were there first. In the past that worked pretty well on the PC side of things, but consumers understand phones and tablets enough that they can't get away with that in those areas.
Of course, that's why I said one of the only places left.
Microsoft has mainly focused on implementing in a way that reduces labor (i.e. simplicity of configuration and administration) and software costs as a business strategy. On the OS side and the compiler side of the house they are tremendously innovative, I don't think you can question their accomplishments there. I think there is a tendency not to consider things like the design of the Microsoft networking stack or the internal structures for C# compilers when talking about Microsoft.