Can We Afford Microsoft Innovation?

I learned, through an article by Robin Harris (ZDNet), that the current Microsoft Chief Software Architect, Ray Ozzie wishes for Microsoft to become an innovator. Chief Software Architect is the position that Mr. Gates used to occupy.

In the very first paragraph, Mr. Harris sums the situation very nicely -

Microsoft’s new Chief Software Architect, Ray Ozzie, recently said that Microsoft’s reactive culture may be the company’s greatest liability as an innovator. But we don’t need an innovative Microsoft. Simple competence would be improvement enough.

Amen, brother! Every time, in my memory, that we have seen innovation from Microsoft, it has been a detour into irrelevance and exorbitant expenditure. Microsoft Bob, Clippy, and Vista come immediately to mind.

Yet, Ozzie seems to have good intentions.

“Our greatest challenge may lie within,” [Ozzie] says. Throughout its history, Microsoft has demonized competitors— regardless of whether they posed vital threats to the company— and then defined itself in opposition to the presumed enemy. Now Ozzie urges his troops to innovate toward the light, not against the darkness. “Every day we make a choice to focus on the outside competitor or the competitor within,” he says, clearly implying that the latter option is the path best taken.

Perhaps Ozzie can be the balancing faction, to buffer the effects of the evil Darth Ballmer, however, it still is probably overreaching to aspire to useful innovation. Keeping up with the changes to hardware innovation is probably all we should expect, or want. Thinking about it, most everything that can be done with a computer has already been done – new  programs are merely new arrangements of the basic things that can be done, to achieve the desired results.

As Mr. Harris correctly asserts, Microsoft is the ‘Japan’ of companies on Earth. They don’t do innovation, they (when the stars are properly aligned) refine and improve the ideas of others, making them sometimes great in the process.

That is their bailiwick, and they should keep to it.

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