Microsoft HoloLens: generating its own innovation ecosystem
Last Wednesday, I set an exam for one of my two groups in the “Innovation in a Digital World” course, which is part of IE Business School’s International MBA program that I’ve been teaching for 25 years. The exam was based on a mini-case study on the launch of Microsoft HoloLens, a product that has been hailed as innovative by many, and that I see creating a number of interesting challenges for the company.
HoloLens was launched on January 21, 2015 as part of “Windows 10: the next chapter”, and has been described by some analysts as “the company’s coolest and most intriguing product ever”. This is an augmented reality visor in the form of glasses, along the lines of the Oculus VR (which now belongs to Facebook), or Google’s Cardboard. The difference is that HoloLens combines real images with holograms that are projected onto the screen, while at the same time allowing the user to hear wraparound sound through its built-in speakers.
The launch of the product, which has been well received by and large, has been described as “the most-advanced holographic computer the world has even seen”, and will work with Windows 10, due to be launched on July 29 simultaneously in 12 cities, and that will doubtless have a huge impact on the company’s strategy, positioning, and public perceptions of it.
Why choose the launch of HoloLens as an exam topic in a course on innovation? Because it is more than just a gadget, and represents the development of an innovation ecosystem around something that previously didn’t exist, a challenge in itself, and that the elements that make up said ecosystem have to be chosen very carefully. This is an ecosystem the development of which will be a challenge for a company that after many lost years being run by a hooligan, now seems, under Satya Nadella, to have recovered its strategic vision.
My exams are carried out on an open computer, with a 90-minute time limit, and must fit into two pages (excluding diagrams). Anybody who is interested can find the same paper here, the central question of which is: what is the most critical element that Microsoft must manage in launching a product like HoloLens?
(En español, aquí)
