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Challenges And Strategy - Reasons For This MemoChallenges And Strategy - Reasons For This Memo
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Subjects > Computers (Search for Computers) > Microsoft (Search) > Challenges and Strategy By Bill Gates
Prologue: The Reason for this Memo
Every year I set aside at least one "think week" to get away and update myself on the latest technical developments -- reading PhD?Create|Search theses, using competitive products, reading books, newsletters and anything I can get my hands on. Several valuable thoughts have come out of these retreats (tables for Word, outlining in Excel, treating DOS as more of an asset), however the complexity of the industry and its techology means that a lot of my time is spent just trying to keep up rather than coming up with new product ideas. It is no longer possible for any person, even our "architects", to understand everything that is going on. Networking, processors, linguistics, multimedia, development tools, and user interfaces are just a subset of the technologies that will affect Microsoft. My role is to understand enough to set direction. I enjoy these weeks a great deal -- not because I get away from the issues of running Microsoft but rather because I get to think more clearly about how to best lead the company away from problems and toward opportunities. A lot of people choose things for me to read. By the end of the week I make an effort to synthesize the best ideas and make our technical strategy clear.
This year I decided to write a memo about overall strategy to the executive staff. As we have grown and faced new challenges my opportunities to speak to each of you directly has been greatly reduced. Even the aspects of our strategy that remain unchanged are worth reinforcing.
In the same way that DEC's strategy for the 80's was VAX -- one architecture, one operating system -- our strategy for the 90's is Windows -- one evolving architecture, a couple of implementations. Everything we do should focus on making Windows more successful.
A source of inspiration to me is a memo by John Walker of Autodesk called "Autodesk: The Final Days" (copies available from JulieG?Create|Search). It's brilliantly written and incredibly insightful. John hasn't been part of Autodesk management for three years and hasn't attended any management meetings for over two years, so he writes as an outsider questioning whether Autodesk is doing the right things. By talking about how a large company slows down, fails to invest enough and loses sight of what is important, and by using Microsoft as an example of how to do some things correctly he manages to touch on a lot of what's right and wrong with Microsoft today. Amazingly his nightmare scenario to get people to consider what's really important is Microsoft deciding to enter the CAD market -- something we have no present thoughts of doing because it would stretch us too thin. Our nightmare -- IBM "attacking" us in systems software, Novell "defeating" us in networking and more agile, lower cost structure, customer-oriented applications, competitors getting their Windows to act together is not a scenario, but a reality.
Recently a long time employee mentioned that we seem to have more challenges facing us now than ever before. Although I agree that it feels that way I can say with confidence that it has felt that way every year for the last 15. We decided to pursue a broad product strategy from the very beginning of the company and that means we have a lot of competitors. Our success is incredible, not just within the software industry or computer industry but within the history of business, and the combination of this with the incredibly competitive nature of our business breeds challenges to our position. I think it is critical to divide these challenges into different categories.
The 3 categories are then listed, as shown below...
Other sections of this memo:
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