September 28, 2007
unleashing the blue monster [drum roll, please.…]
From Johnnie Moore [one of my favorite bloggers, by the way]:
And (doh) that’s what Hugh’s Blue Monster schtick is about, right? As I get it, the Blue Monster as represents all the energy that keeps people at Microsoft despite its frustrations — and the idea that it needs to be unleashed.
Yep. That pretty much sums it up. Thanks for that, Johnnie.
Taking a Blue Monster-type tack may be the wrong move, of course [I’m a cartoonist, not a soothsayer]. But besides rearguard actions defending their core cash cows, what other option do they have? What other option does any large company have, with a mature brand and a vast army of shareholders? Serious question.
"Hugh's Daily Cartoon" Newsletter.
A new cartoon sent out every weekday morning to your inbox [RSS version here.].
A wee chuckle to start your day off right etc.
I hear social networking is popular these days.
More seriously, the theory dictates that like any such company should take the cash from the cash cows and seek to build new businesses in areas which have great growth potential and become the cash cows of the future. The other part of the theory that is all too often ignored is that the existing markets have peaked and have only one way to go so it is suicidal to focus on reineventing or replicating them.
Just as current successes derived from doing something different in the past, so future successes will derive from doing something different now.
The marketing challenge for a big company is to appear small. That’s why the Blue Monster works. By hiring you it’s like Microsoft is behaving like a startup. Totally not expected behavior of a big evil multinational corporation.
If I were at Microsoft I know what I’d do: ask Bill Gates for a few hundred million and start up a new division aimed at Internet collaborative services. Put a firewall between it and the Office and Windows teams. If it ends up competing with Office, so be it.
They have the option of striving to make their customers strong.
I don’t buy MS Word because it’s bloated and has features I would never use, and it’s just too annoying with its million and one options that I have to labour first to find so I can turn the damned things off because I don’t want it making all these decisions like indenting and automatically numbering the next paragraph. It doesn’t make me feel weak, but it sure doesn’t make me strong.
I read your “How To Be Creative” and I am stronger, and motivated, and inspired though the word has been worked to death, and would part with cash for more of it.
Can Microsoft produce software whose beginning and end point is increased strength of the user?
Yours,
John Ballantrae
nice!
We ordered some blog cards recently from Gaping Void. They are excellent quality — highly recommended!