

It’s Time For Microsoft To Turn Itself Upside-Down - edw519
http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/06/its-time-for-microsoft-to-turn-itself-upside-down/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29&utm_content=My+Yahoo

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zaidf
I'm personally tired of these armchair "experts" that know exactly how to fix
one of the biggest market cap companies.

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benologist
But it's so cute when people post their perfect little solutions on Dear/Open
Letter To Jobs/Balmer/etc blog posts.

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jakarta
Why does the answer have to be invest in tech?

Microsoft throws off something like $14B in free cash flow. They could use
their toll booth-like cash flow to acquire good businesses that offer nice,
steady returns, in areas outside of tech. There is some logic in the
conglomerate model after all. Go buy a big insurance company.

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sman
The new IBM follows the business model you just mentioned though they do not
venture outside technology. They no longer invest in building anything ground
up. They buy a reasonably successful technologies ( Lotus, Rational, etc) and
use an army of salespeople to upsell the new technologies.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisition...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_IBM#Acquisitions_since_1999)

The reason IBM does not get outside the technology sector is because the
profit margins are one of the highest when it comes to software. They have
sold most of their non-software business's in recent years: They dumped the
loss making Thinkpad for a hefty sum to Lenovo, got rid of most of their
semiconductor business and are a software sales company today. I guess the
same reason will apply to MS for not getting into any non technology sector.

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jakarta
The trick though is paying the right price for acquisitions. Studies have
shown that acquirers tend to overpay on acquisitions, so it is important to
have someone in place that has the discipline necessary.

IBM might have someone like that in place, but I'd imagine Microsoft does not.

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potatolicious
> _"So the solution is simple: start building garages."_

This is about as insightful and helpful as someone telling a smoker, "well,
just STOP smoking!". I've seen the sentiment expressed a lot as of late that
MS needs to be overhauled - I agree, but I don't see anyone with any ideas.

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marshallp
That is an idea - start building garages - allow internal teams to release
whatever they want regardless of whether they step on each other's toes.

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awa
Microsoft actually has started a garage concept with a real garage inside one
of the MS buildings... Some of the things that have come out of there:
<http://www.officelabs.com/Pages/ConceptTests.aspx>

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metaforth
The ideas are not very good. I can't see what "problem" they are trying to
solve. The innovation that we see here is very superficial.

Microsoft's real problem is its top-down hierarchy and performance-ranking
driven DNA, which fouls up whatever they step into. Superficial solutions like
a garage or an officelabs are irrelevant to their bottom line. These are
mostly costmetic and PR efforts.

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protomyth
I get the feeling the best thing for the execs at Microsoft to do would be go
on eBay and buy an iPod mini, put it in your office, and think that it was
your competitors best selling devices and they replaced it anyway.

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halo
Perhaps they should go on eBay and buy a copy of Visual Basic 6, put it in
their office, and think that it was one of their best selling development
platforms and they replaced it anyway.

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danbmil99
I don't see how MS can truly be innovative as long as you are bound to deploy
your garage projects only on Windows (you have to be huge to be allowed to run
on Mac, and never ever EVAR on Linux).

They should federate -- let apps run anywhere regardless of the mothership,
let the OS live/die on its own steam.

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awa
They just launched apps for Android and they have had apps for iPhone for
quite sometime. Also, isn't Office for Mac one of the top selling Mac
software.

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blogimus
The narration about the relationship between Microsoft's "garages" and its
entrenched corporate structure reminds me of the Xerox PARC story. All this
invention and innovation which is orthogonal to the established corporate
bread and butter.

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technomancy
I dunno, I think it's time for Microsoft to turn itself back right-side-up.

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startupcomment
Interesting to recall that MSFT spends billions annually on R&D -- more than
any other large tech firm (according to a recent article).

