Mxsmanic wrote:

David Maynard writes:


Still, there's the matter of why would someone be induced to change the
vision?


If the new guy lacks the vision, he has no choice.

Logically, no, but not having one doesn't preclude the fool hardly from
trying anyway That's the reverse of my scenario and back to yours:
incompetent new management.

I'm not arguing there's a 'universal' scenario but that it varies,
depending on a host of circumstances.

Stagnation is one possibility and the other is the 'new guy' making
his mark with his own 'vision', but if things are humming merrily along
he'd be foolish to change things too much so we get back to "where do we go
now?"


In the case of Microsoft, it would be because the only way to keep
things humming along is through continuous exercise of the same
vision--and that vision is now gone.

Yes, same point I made below.

Steve Ballmer is a businessman,
not a visionary, and he belongs much more to the standard MBA school
of management. I understand he reads all the latest "how-to" books on
management (literally).

You seem 'surprised'. Would you be surprised to hear the 'geeks' read all
the latest 'how to' technology books and trade journals?

Sure it was the norm because it only ran on the company's proprietary
hardware so, go to it folks, make more stuff for our proprietary hardware,
which is where the money was to begin with, and you're not releasing into
the market the thing that makes it proprietary, your hardware.


Yes. Customers had source so they could change it if they needed to.
It was never going to run on any other platform, anyway, so it didn't
matter.

We agree.

IBM failed to recognize just how utterly trivial it was, compared to
'mainframes', to duplicate the hardware, not to mention they had simply
purchased a public domain design made from freely available parts, and then
to publish the one and only 'proprietary' piece, BIOS source, *PLUS* haven
given away rights to sell the DOS (same, "who cares about the software?"
notion)... well, woops.

I'm not saying it should have been obvious at the time but it sure is in
hindsight and I'd imagine Microsoft noticed it along with everyone else.


I think it was obvious even then. PCs were clearly a different ball
game.

Well, I was developing proprietary microcomputers for specific industry
applications, not 'general purpose' computers, so I am not sure how
'obvious' it would have been.


IBM has always thought about everything in the same way. I remember
renting a typewriter from them once, and it was just amazing how they
did it, with invoices and purchase orders and service contracts and so
on. If something went wrong with the typewriter, I had to schedule a
visit from a field engineer--I couldn't just bring the broken part in
somewhere and get it replaced. The cost of one visit from a field
engineer was greater than six months of rental fees.

Well, now that is definitely true and gets back to the 'vision' thing.
IBM's computer vision went back to the early mainframe days when keeping
one running for 8 hours straight was big news and the vision that put them
on top was the 200% support paradigm. Remember the 'white shirt, black tie,
pocket protector army?


That's one reason why companies are always searching for a 'process' that
is, essentially, 'one-time genius' independent. I.E. idea generation from
market feedback, hire/consult 'experts' in the new thing, brain storming
sessions, focus group studies, etc..


And has any company ever succeeded at this?

Most do, even if the first thought comes from the internal 'genius'.

Success requires being
smart, and no process can produce intelligence where it didn't
previously exist.

You don't 'produce' it, you gather it from many sources rather than
expecting one person to be omniscient.

And the process itself comes from 'smarts'.

I wonder if that's because Bill Gates is 'gone' or if it's more the result
of this being about as far as a business suite/'Windows'O.S. combination
can take them, especially in a U.S. market, at least, that is closer to
saturation than it is the wide open early days of growing by leaps and
bounds and where you have to now do upgrades, or 'something', just to stay
even. The wave they were riding ain't there no more.


I think it's both, and the wave has definitely broken on the beach and
is now starting to pull back out to sea. Unless they come up with
something entirely new (not just another "upgrade" of the OS or
Office), the tide has permanently turned. I don't expect them to come
up with anything new.

I don't expect it but I don't discount the possibility either.

The whole business model of continually forced upgrades isn't going to
work forever, either.

I tend to agree, as long as the upgrades are relatively minor 'features'
but not terribly different to the primary mission.

Eventually consumers will get tired of moving
to a new OS every year. Even now, there are untold millions of PCs
that are never "upgraded" beyond the OS they had when first installed.
Each time Microsoft tries an "upgrade" to maintain revenue, it
increases the incoherence of the installed base, which has more and
more versions of Windows up and running, from Windows 3.1 to XP.

It's notable that you didn't include anything prior to 3.1, though, because
there was a major functionality shift at that point (I'd cut it off at
Win95) so it *is* possible for an 'upgrade' to delineate a major shift, if
it's functionally significant enough.

And I'm not so sure we may not be near another one as 32 bit transitions to
64, single core to dual core, and, perhaps, the long touted 3D Desktop.


And there isn't another 'IBM' giant poised to dominate a huge future market
that you can sell DOS to and clean up when someone cracks their BIOS code
nor is anyone going to give them 'sell to others' license rights, so those
'great ideas' aren't going to happen again no matter how 'smart' they are.


Yes. I think MS has a comfortable number of years ahead of it, but
there will be no major breakthroughs or skyrocketing growth now.

MS is becoming the very company with which it fought when it was
little. MS is the new IBM. But the wheel will continue to turn.

Well, they're 'big' now but that's about the only similarity to the IBM of
old. Completely different visions, primary business, and business models.


When you first posed that scenario I thought it made a lot of sense but the
more I think about it the more I question it, at least as a 'universal'. It
can certainly happen that way but you can also be simply obsoleted by the
next 'great idea'. For example, the introduction of calculators put the
slide rule folks out of business, at least in that business, virtually
overnight without them having to make 'too many mistakes'.


The next great idea need not come from another company; in theory it
could come from MS just as it has in the past. But the visionary is
gone at MS, so it won't come from MS this time.

I didn't say it *had* to, I was just pointing out that it could and put you
out of business without one needing to make 'too many mistakes'.

If a single brilliant CEO could live forever, then companies could be
successful forever.

This is where I disagree and intended the previous example to show. Even
the most brilliant buggy whip CEO can't stave off the automobile nor does
his brilliance in buggy whips give him one whit of insight into making good
cars. He's probably better off as the dreaded 'MBA type' that's
transportable to any industry

But that's impossible, so virtually all companies
end up with bad management at some point and dwindle or disappear.

We may be coming to a divergence here because I don't think it takes 'the
genius' for a company to survive. Plain old stupidity, of course, can kill
anything but there's a whole world in-between genius and idiot.

There are very rare exceptions, such as GE, which is so diversified
that it can scarcely avoid making money no matter who is at the helm.

Oh, lordy. Now that you've said it they're probably doomed

Microsoft has no diversification at all, though, and that's very
dangerous. Its attempts at diversification have been largely
unsuccessful, too (MSN was a disaster and has only survived through
constant infusion of billions to keep it in business).

Yes, I agree. But wasn't MSN a Bill Gates era idea?

Of course, I suppose you can always call it a 'mistake' to not be
diversified enough (that's those bottom-line-style management types you
don't like) ...


For long-term, large-scale success, diversification is essential.
There are few areas of business that are so constant and guaranteed
that you can specialize in them over the long term and still make
money.

I agree. It's just not the kind of thing the 'great idea' originator does
because his idea is for the thing he started, not diversification. That
generally comes from those 'management types' who don't have a vested geek
interest in some pet project.


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