The thinking behind Micro$oft's long term strategyBig iron and Detroit shape the world's
largest software company
More stuff later tonight, I still have some
errands to run. But this bit just leaped out at
me.
Implicit in Microsoft's approach is the belief that customers are simply too stupid to know what they want and that it is Microsoft's job to teach them why and how they should use Microsoft's overly complex and therefore unreliable programs. This is no joke. It's a serious problem and not easily fixed. It begins right at the top of the company, with Ballmer himself. I hate to play armchair analyst but Ballmer's roots -- a Detroit kid growing up with a dad who was a Ford manager -- are too significant to ignore. Remember Detroit in the 1970s, when customers started saying they wanted smaller, cheaper, leaner, simpler cars? Toyota and Honda listened, while the Big Three kept cranking out monstrously huge cars and then putting all sorts of effort (advertising, discounts on the lot, dealer incentives, blackballing dealers who tried to open Toyota or Honda stores, spouting empty patriotic rhetoric about buying American, blah blah) thinking that by doing this they could get customers to buy the cars that they'd already told Detroit they didn't want. This -- not Harvard, not Stanford -- was where Ballmer's worldview was formed. There at Detroit Country Day School with the other kids whose dads ran the Big Three in the last days of Detroit's golden era. Now at Microsoft we're seeing a repeat of this phenomenon. BINGO! Micro$oft has lost the ability to listen to their customers. It was never their strong point to begin with. Hat tip to Daring Fireball. Posted: Thu - June 14, 2007 at 12:15 PM
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Pagan Vigil
Pagan philosopher, libertarian, and part-time trouble maker, NeoWayland watches for threats to individual freedom or personal responsiblity. There's more to life than just black and white, using only extremes just increases the problems. My Thinking Blogger Nominees
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