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WebWord Weblog Posting Posting Date: December 07, 2002 Microsoft's secret for staying on top (CNET) -- "The essence of our argument is that the key to Microsoft's success is the way it manages its intellectual property. By this we don't just mean patents, but the broad base of knowledge that the company has built over time, which is largely embedded in its software code libraries." (Comments: I could not really find any evidence in this article that Microsoft succeeds through usability or understanding customers. Also, I was surprised that virtually no emphasis was placed on the Microsoft marketing machine. Further, I was surprised that Microsoft's monopoly position doesn't seem to have an impact on their overall success, at least according to the article.)
Reader Comments...
Like It or Not, Microsoft Has a Vision Here's a quote I liked a lot: "But even the most minor improvements in Microsoft's software have gigantic implications because of the sheer numbers of users of the company's stuff."
Hmmm... Politically correct propaganda timed to coincide with the Microsoft antitrust settlement ruling? Just a hypothesis as to why the article overlooks so many well-established reasons for Microsoft's continued success...
First, it had an established base of knowledge that could be brought to bear on newly emerging opportunities. Second, it had a well-defined process through which new intellectual property could be codified and integrated into this knowledge base in a way that ensured compatibility with its existing components. And third, it established processes to evolve this knowledge base to ensure it reflected changes in the broader technological context. This was written by professors at Harvards? Reads like it was written by a Microsoft PR person. We found that Microsoft products were consistently rated highly when compared to competitive offerings, a result that held true across different product categories and over time. On average, Microsoft products "won" more than two-thirds of the competitive reviews we examined. How did they measure this? Who were the people who rated these products? What kind of questions did they ask? Have they been conducting this study for 15 years? We discovered that Microsoft's projects exhibited significantly higher productivity than the sample average. Sure, because Microsoft unleashed an army of programmers to work on Internet Explorer (which initially had technology licensed from Spyglass if I remember correctly.) Furthermore, we found that the resulting products were rated as equal to or higher in quality than competitive offerings. The balance didn't begin to tilt in Microsoft's favour till Internet Explorer version 4.0 in 1997. IE 3.0 was a competent browser, but the ones before that were crap. The reason IE became so widespread was that it was bundled with Windows. There's that "rating" thing again. From this point on, competitors in the browser space faced a formidable challenge. They were competing not only against the Explorer team, but also against the continual improvements made to Microsoft's underlying platform over its many years of existence. Oh puh-leeze. Are they really saying that Netscape failed because IE was built using the component model? Do most users even know about it or care? Is that why most people use IE now? Because of its "componentization"? I'm amazed by how this article leads you to think that sound coding practices are the reason for Microsoft's success. They may have good programmers, but good project management certainly isn't why they're so ahead. Marketing and business strategy has played a very important role in it. If you really want to read about Microsoft's strategy, read High Stakes, No Prisoners. Posted by: MadMan on December 8, 2002 11:13 PM
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