(my background: I worked at MS from 2003-2007 until I jumped ship to join a 20 person startup.)
The answer is simple: Microsoft needs its own Steve Jobs, not a Steve Ballmer.
Without an absolute tyrant with a keen sense of where the market is, and where it's going at the helm, Microsoft will continue to flounder. And with good reason, there are too many internal fiefdoms, and too many internal rivalries.
To be honest, I think MS would've been very well served to have been broken up at the end of the 90s. If the company had been divided into three separate firms, like Office Inc., Windows Inc. and Everything Else Inc., I think things would've turned out very differently for those firms over the past ten years: fewer boondoggle projects that only have a prayer of making a profit in the distant future, less of a whackjob 'better together' mentality that hamstrings Microsoft developers into using inadequate internal solutions or forces them to bolt useless features onto their products, and so on.
Sigh, sorry. I really think Microsoft is capable of so much more than they've been able to do for years, and it frustrates me to see so much talent go to waste.
My impression of the man is he's just a sales guy - interested in making money, but lacking any vision or genuine enthusiasm for technology. Consequently Microsoft has mostly become a cash cow.
As the saying goes - a fish rots from the head down. When there's no passion for changing the world, it happens elsewhere.
The article we're all commenting on talks about Microsoft's ill-fated Tablet computer, which premiered almost a decade before the iPad. Microsoft does many things which could be considered 'innovative,' except that they never achieve widespread market acceptance.
Also, when was the last time Microsoft won with the "non-innovative innovation model" you refer to? Sharepoint? SQL Server? I can't think of any instance where this has worked in years.
The answer is simple: Microsoft needs its own Steve Jobs, not a Steve Ballmer.
Without an absolute tyrant with a keen sense of where the market is, and where it's going at the helm, Microsoft will continue to flounder. And with good reason, there are too many internal fiefdoms, and too many internal rivalries.
To be honest, I think MS would've been very well served to have been broken up at the end of the 90s. If the company had been divided into three separate firms, like Office Inc., Windows Inc. and Everything Else Inc., I think things would've turned out very differently for those firms over the past ten years: fewer boondoggle projects that only have a prayer of making a profit in the distant future, less of a whackjob 'better together' mentality that hamstrings Microsoft developers into using inadequate internal solutions or forces them to bolt useless features onto their products, and so on.
Sigh, sorry. I really think Microsoft is capable of so much more than they've been able to do for years, and it frustrates me to see so much talent go to waste.