Microsoft And Innovation

In my piece from yesterday, in talking about Microsoft Azure, I said that I was not particularly excited, but that I did feel the announcement was important and the services are needed.

One of my commenters asked what would excite me from Microsoft.

My answer: the unexpected.

It is not exciting when Microsoft delivers something that we have been expecting, or needing for a long time. This may not be fair, because perhaps what we expect from Microsoft is unreasonable. But what excites me, what excites us, fair or not, is software that delights – software that does something impactful in a way that no one else has done before.

But this is hard. It’s hard because Microsoft has so many fish to fry, so many products to complete, and so much cross-divisional impact to manage. They can’t just let a bunch of skunk works go and disrupt their corporate vision with something that does not fit into the family tree.

Microsoft’s problem is that they have this huge franchise that they feel the need to bring everywhere they go. Everything is Windows. And they are porting around many of the same APIs and platforms that they have supported since DOS. Now obviously Windows for Smartphones does not support DOS, but they have tried to bring as much of the API and the UI as they can. They believe that the franchise, and the historical developer support makes it critical that they make changes slowly.

This type of thinking yields a desktop-style Windows OS on a cell phone, which is a bit like trying to squeeze an elephant into a thimble, and in the end it just doesn’t work.

The point is that Microsoft carries both burdensome luggage, and simultaneously has rocket boosters strapped to its back. The Windows franchise is both a curse and a blessing. And Microsoft has to figure out when to abandon it, and when to steadfastly support and embrace it.

But yesterday when I said that Microsoft did not innovate, I have to admit it is not true. They do innovate sometimes, it’s just not nearly enough for a company with the kind of resources they have. And when they do innovate, it almost seems like they don’t even realize it.

As an example of great innovation, Microsoft Surface is stunning. It is a platform that makes everything in the computing space tactile. It is at the heart of the election coverage where states are being shown flying around from toss up to leaning Obama. But there, Microsoft is launching it in this really anemic way, as a part of a $10,000+ computer system, instead of establishing it as a new, broad metaphor for computing. And so even when they innovate, they do it in a way that almost makes you feel like they are ashamed to be doing something that doesn’t say “WINDOWS!!!!”

As I see it, Surface should be the interface to a new operating system. It should be a new computing platform, and not one in $10,000 computers, but in desktops and laptops of today. The iPhone is no more revolutionary than Surface, but Microsoft has a way of convincing us that some of its best work is almost irrelevant.

In short the fact that Microsoft is a laggard and not an innovator is part truth, and part a fiction supported by the fact that they seem to have a hard time, as a culture, figuring out how to trigger an adrenaline rush. And so they just don’t inspire.