Microsoft post-Ballmer: the future is open
I immediately remembered Microsoft’s 2010 slogan “Be what’s next“ when I heard the news that Steve Ballmer had been fired, the man responsible for its declining influence and leadership, the man who missed each and every technological revolution of the last decade.
An article in the MIT Tech Review called “Why Microsoft’s next CEO should break up the company” argues that a company that has become a bureaucratic monster no longer capable of innovation should be divided up, and speculates on the future of a series of mini-Bills or baby-Bills working separately on the operating system, desktop applications, server applications, entertainment, and online activities.
One of the open questions at the major field exam that I had to answer while preparing for my doctorate at UCLA was exactly about that hypothesis: the break up of Microsoft. A that time, there was much speculation about the possible impact of the United States vs. Microsoft monopoly suit, but many of the conclusions I drew then are still applicable. From what I know about Microsoft, I don’t think we are talking about a company yet unable to innovate. It is undoubtedly mired in red tape overweight, and in need of new leadership and a culture change, but I don’t think that a series of spin-offs is the way to solve those problems in a company that is fantastically well capitalized, and is not exactly lacking in the economic resources that kind of process might create.
My impression is that the main thing that has held Microsoft back over the last decade have been the excesses derived from a culture that has been overly concerned with proprietary issues. The Microsoft mentality is focused on what is happening within the company, based on the belief that anything it needs to do can be done with its own resources. This outlook closes the door to innovation from outside: the company doesn’t learn from its users, because these have been held at arm’s length behind myriad resellers, partners, OEMs, integrators, etc. Getting and staying close to the customers is essential in an era when so much innovation comes from studying use models and the way that clients adapt to innovation.
The world has changed completely. The companies that lead in terms of innovation do not use their own resources, instead they work on building platforms that feed into and off the innovation of third parties, either through development communities or structures that integrate others’ creativity. Being open is a key process in developing quality products, an indispensible part of the process of reacting rapidly to problems and mistakes, and a guarantee of the right attitude.
What Microsoft needs to ask itself is how it can compete in this changed world where open structures have won decisively over closed ones, and how to make this reality impact on its development philosophy. Something as simple as thinking about opening the code of its products is not just a way of improving them, but also one of showing a new attitude, a different image: one of the key problems Microsoft faces is the negative image, due in large part to Ballmer himself, that many of its customers have of it.
Competing with products that have been developed in this increasingly more open world requires a more open approach: Microsoft must begin a process of genuinely opening up, one that is capable of initiating a positive dynamic within the company. This is a process that requires not just adequate leadership, but a combined effort on the part of each and every Microsoft division. And for this to happen, it is very unlikely that the company would be better off being broken up. The philosophy that led Bill Gates in 2006 to link his foundation’s support solely for research projects that worked with open source projects should now spread throughout the company that he created. Microsoft was one of the companies that helped encourage the open code mentality through an action-reaction process. Now it is time for it to embrace a philosophy that quite simply is the zeitgeist.
How to go about creating a Microsoft that is focused on innovation and, above all, openness? That is the only question that the next CEO of the company should be asking him or herself. And it is a challenge that few will be able to rise to.
