April 25, 2006
we need to re-invent
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From Tom Raftery:
Robert Scoble, Microsoft5 Responses to “we need to re-invent”
Hugh MacLeod
I'm a cartoonist.
I sell limited-edition prints.
I wrote a book.
I'm CEO of Stormhoek USA, which markets South African wine in the States.
I also draw private commissions.
Prints |
Opening | Current |
|---|---|---|
Bluetrain |
$900 | |
We Need to Talk |
$650 | |
Portfolio #2 |
$300 | |
NY NY |
$275 |
What Microsoft needs to do is switch to a Linux/BSD kernel and focus on providing a productive user experience. Similar to what Apple did with OSX.
That would shake up the market and Microsoft.
I’m not sure MS knows what their Big Idea is right now either. If its just protecting what they have, then its not going to fly. A Big Idea needs to be something everyone can buy into…investors, employees, customers, and even non-customers.
Who care’s about protecting what MS already has? Investors are seeing no growth, many employees are unhappy, and certainly customers, many of whom have been victim to MS bullying tactics have no vested interest in helping them stay in shape.
The problem with getting too big is that you need increasingly bigger ideas to keep everyone motivated. At some point, there just aren’t any taller mountains to climb.
Thanks for Tom’s precis! Scoble’s post typifies all that is wrong with him. Volume, volume, volume. I went to his page assuming a long post would take me a few minutes to read and lost the will to live very quickly.
He may have some good insights in there, but whereas he can spend a lot of his day producing it, the audience has far less time to digest it and, I would argue, will give him less credit than he may deserve because of the impression of flabby thinking that such lack of concision suggests.
Some might argue that this is a metaphor for Microsoft.
He he! How can you buy everyone a Dell machine running Vista, “now!” when it’s not going to be released until …
MS should stop marketing and start innovating. Does ANYBODY read those idiotic ads with people wearing dinosaur heads? Does MS understand that they are calling their OWN customers dinosaurs because they haven’t immediately upgraded to the latest release?
US car companies used to release a “new” model every year that only differed from the previous model because of a bit of chrome and slightly bigger tail fins.
One day they woke up and discovered the Japanese had stolen the market.