An Example of Why Microsoft Has Lost Its Way

A former Microsoft employee, Dick Brass, wrote an op-ed in the New York Times where he called Microsoft a "clumsy, uncompetitive innovator". He laments that Microsoft has lost its way and gives several examples of how.

Microsoft has responded to this criticism on the Official Microsoft Blog. In it, Frank Shaw, VP of Corporate Communications argues that Mr. Brass is wrong. He claims that was is important is what he calls "innovation at scale" - the ability to get technology in the hands of billions of people. You should infer from this that "innovation at speed" is much less important.

So, following this logic, if I invent some cool new technology and I'm able to get it in the hands of, say 1 million people in less than 1 year, then I'm innovating at speed.

But when Microsoft takes that technology and spends 10 years getting it into the hands of say 1 Billion people, that is innovation at scale - and that's better.

I don't get it. How exactly is taking a decade to deploy somebody else's technology called innovation?

Microsoft isn't an innovator at all. Rarely has been. MS-DOS? Got it from IBM. Windows? Invented my Xerox, popularized by Apple. It was deployed to the masses by Microsoft. Is that innovation? I don't think so.

But rather than admit that they don't innovate, Microsoft tries to change the definition of the word innovate. What does that sound like?

To me it sounds like a government bureaucracy trying to redefine a word to make it seem like they are providing something they aren't. Or that something is working, when it isn't.

A few years ago, I heard a news report that Microsoft had a skunkworks project under way where they created a brand new operating system to replace DOS and Windows. It was fast, smart, scalable, stable and reliable. It just wasn't 100% compatible with all the Windows programs that had already existed. They called it Singularity. It never saw the light of day. If it had, perhaps Microsoft could have been called an innovator.

But it didn't. Any they are not.