Archive for December 20th, 2006
Hollywood, Bollywood – it’s all the same wherever you are
December 20, 2006This tidbit caught my eye when I was reading a Forbes article on Bollywood:
earlier this month, a lawyer filed a criminal case against former Miss World Aishwarya Rai and Hrithik Roshan, actors in the movie Dhoom 2, because they had an on-screen kiss.
The lawsuit accused the pair of lowering the dignity of Indian women and encouraging obscenity among India’s youth. Legal experts say that the suit is almost certain to be thrown out, though it does reflect a conservatism about movies that would be unfamiliar to most Americans.
A conservatism about movies that would be unfamiliar to most Americans, ehhhh? I guess that’s why there’s no media coverage about Matt Damon kissing Angelina Jolie in the new movie, The Good Shepherd.
The Microsoft Way
December 20, 2006David Pogue wonders if copying is institutionalized at Microsoft.
In Vista, on the other hand, Microsoft did not select unrecognized features, did not have any particular vision in knowing what would work and what wouldn’t, did not put its own stamp on anything. It simply waited for Apple to recognize and perfect good technologies, then duplicated them bit for bit. Oh, and then claim to be a leader in innovation. That’s quite a difference!”
I posted a comment on his website and also addressed the same issue earlier in my post about Zune.
Microsoft has no choice but steal/copy/borrow from other companies. They do not have or have they ever had a mechanism to get feedback from consumers about their needs or preferred use. This is a design of their business model (licensing either to corporations directly or OEM’ing). The only way to bridge this gap is to copy so, of course, this behavior is formalized.
Microsoft’s most valuable organization is its marketing communications team. They have spun a nice marketing myth about their innovation that the market has bought into (mostly). Let’s not forget their PR team which has forged deep ties with MSM that any bogus press release will garner sensational attention (for example, here’s one about how Zune will sell 1M by June).
Here’s the straight dope: despite Robert Scoble’s insistence
Scoble: “Microsoft is struggling – struggling to stay important to a new always-on, always-connected world. … But, when you see things like Photosynth, you realize Microsoft can come back and be innovative. They have a lot of smart people, and huge resources (resources that very few companies have).”
and Steve Ballmer’s remonstration
While it’s clear that Microsoft is changing, old behaviors die hard. When Ballmer gets talking about how Microsoft must be first with technology innovations — which, so far in Microsoft’s history, has not often happened — the exchange is more like vintage pugilistic Microsoft.
Ballmer: “You’ve got to be not just first in an area; you’ve got to be first with important innovations even in areas that you’ve pioneered.”USA TODAY reporter: “Well, you guys have proved over and over again being first is not necessarily …”
Ballmer: “We love to be first.”
Reporter: “You love to be first but …”
Ballmer: “We love to be first.”
Reporter: “You certainly weren’t the first — you know, I mean, here looking at your …”
Ballmer: “We love to be first. Well, our big success is Windows. We were first. Windows, we were first — and then everybody faded out because there was a period during which the concept was — I mean, Apple stuck around with their concept of that, but everybody else faded out, basically.”
Tech people must be scratching their heads. Windows wasn’t the first graphical user interface — that was invented by Xerox and was first made popular by Apple Computer. Microsoft didn’t have the first browser or video player or cell phone operating system. Time and again, the company has come in late and, in many cases, won the day with tenacity. It is a strength Microsoft could boast about but doesn’t.
Microsoft’s core competence is not developing software and it is most definitely not innovating. Microsoft’s core competence is business development, especially creating partnerships that are exclusionary to others. No other company has that much insight into or devotes so many resources to create partnerships and exclusive distribution deals. This is something that Microsoft has perfected from the beginning (think CP/M & IBM) and has become an intrinsic part of the organization. Of course, these deals bordered on illegality sometimes and other times they were merely unethical, but now this lone competency is coming to bite them in their ass. One example is the exclusive deal they signed with AP for video. Guess what? The audience chooses to go to YouTube. While Microsoft is busy looking for deals that lock out other players, the competition is moving faster and subverting Microsoft’s deal making capabilities. The pace is so daunting that Microsoft’s negotiation power has whittled down to next to zero – witness their bending over and paying $1 a Zune to Universal. Sorry Microsoft, deals don’t cut it anymore!
Anyway, while Microsoft is busy trying to figure out how to lock in some customer or emerging business, competitors are actually developing great software. As a result Microsoft has no choice to play catch up and be left out of the list of innovators.
As a side note, Scoble (I hate to pick on him, he seems like such a nice guy), always uses the “Microsoft has the smartest people” cliche when countering criticism against Microsoft. Guess what – every software firm has brilliant people, but innovation is all about how their creativity is allowed to be expressed and appropriately harnessed by good leaders. Something tells me that Adobe, Apple, SAP, and Google, just to name a recognizable few, have just as high a concentration of “brilliant” people as Microsoft. Two key differences on why each firm is successful with what they do and never really trail the market: (1) each individual firm’s core competency (arguably, Apple’s is human interface design) and (2) they are not run by this guy*:
WTF!
*Note: It’s interesting that I could only get that image as a thumbprint from Google cache – I wonder if the powers that be pressured WaPo delete that image because it shows the sheer craziness of Ballmer.
Tell me why and where I am wrong!
Update: Thanks to Akro (in comments) for the larger photo.
