I’m always interested in the psyche of a company, it’s like a rhythm the company moves to and runs subconsciously through everything they do. I think it’s why some people do brilliantly at one company and disastrously at another. One of the reasons I want to work in my own start-up is to have a corporate culture which suits me well. I have experienced this when I was at Orange and I did my best work there.
There is something deeply embedded in Microsoft that seems unable to keep things simple. So even when they have a good idea like the Xbox they can’t resist putting out four different versions of it. Apple has parodied this trait in its commercials, some have speculated how a MS iPod would have turned out and others have pointed out its muddled branding. MS has recently hired marketing guru Alex Bogusky to help them turn things around but I think the problem lies deeper than simply changing the marketing.
Vista is so heavy that users are baulking at the basic requirements needed to run it and sticking with XP. I’ve said before I think the future lies in much lighter operating systems. MS really needs to forget about building an even bulkier Windows 7, throw out the entire code base which is giving it such problems and set off an internal competition to build a new OS. Pick five of the most creative programmers give them all their own company, a stack of cash and let them get on with it. No rules – let them build it on top of Linux if they want to – and see who wins. Let Windows and Office lumber on if they like but get some fresh air into the company.
WL Gore and Associates is a uniquely well run company. One of the principles it employs is to break up any business unit once it gets bigger than 250 people. It does this to maintain a start-up atmosphere and to avoid stifling creativity. This is the road Microsoft needs to take – ironically this is to impose the anti-trust ruling on itself. Microsoft itself could become the holding company and take its history of muddled brands into the past. In its place Xbox, Live Search, (ahem) Zune, and what ever other brands it decides to develop would then be separate companies with only a parent in common. It is no coincidence that its only post-Windows success, the Xbox, is run as autonomous unit. Ballmer is apparently moving in this direction by trying to develop more internal autonomy. He should go the whole hog and break the company up.
