Dick Brass, ex-vice president at Microsoft comments on the past and the future of our favourite “unrepentant intentional monopolist” (notice the “”, they’re from the article in the NYT, I would never use such words, would I?).

Unbelievable stories included, like this one:

For example, early in my tenure, our group of very clever graphics experts invented a way to display text on screen called ClearType. It worked by using the color dots of liquid crystal displays to make type much more readable on the screen. Although we built it to help sell e-books, it gave Microsoft a huge potential advantage for every device with a screen. But it also annoyed other Microsoft groups that felt threatened by our success.

Engineers in the Windows group falsely claimed it made the display go haywire when certain colors were used. The head of Office products said it was fuzzy and gave him headaches. The vice president for pocket devices was blunter: he’d support ClearType and use it, but only if I transferred the program and the programmers to his control. As a result, even though it received much public praise, internal promotion and patents, a decade passed before a fully operational version of ClearType finally made it into Windows.

Oh well, the miracles of organizational culture – it can work wonders or it can be outright dysfunctional, stifling innovation. On a more systematic level:

Unlike other companies, Microsoft never developed a true system for innovation. Some of my former colleagues argue that it actually developed a system to thwart innovation. Despite having one of the largest and best corporate laboratories in the world, and the luxury of not one but three chief technology officers, the company routinely manages to frustrate the efforts of its visionary thinkers.

Well, ideas are aplenty and not the problem – it’s about the follow-up and the implementation … always harder for the large organizations and for those with established and nicely profitable business models to listen to their research departments.

Monster pic by gapingvoid obviously – oh the irony

Robbie Bach, Präsident der Sparte Entertainment & Devices (E&D), verantwortet nun auch die Musikstrategie des Internetportals MSN [...] [und] die Kontakte in den Musik- und Fernsehbranchen und in Hollywood
[...]
[Bach] soll sich zusätzlich um das zukunftsträchtige Geschäft mit dem Vertrieb digitaler Inhalte kümmern.

Der Artikel nennt bspw. Sony nicht als Gegner (und das hat ja auch ein paar Gründe …), aber Apple wird als Ziel Nummer Eins herausgestellt. Im Artikel werden so u.a. die strategischen und strukturellen Innovationen angedeutet die den aktuellen Erfolg von Apple ausmachen, und die Shortcomings der bisherigen Aufstellung bei Microsoft.

Apples durchschlagender Erfolg ist nicht zuletzt ein Resultat der konzernweit koordinierten Entwicklungs- und Marketingsstrategien, die Vorstandschef Steve Jobs für alle Produkte fordert. Microsoft hatte hingegen bisher darunter gelitten, dass die verschiedenen Sparten vor sich hin werkeln und sich wenig abstimmen.