You[Jeff Raikes] are also part of the 10-member senior leadership team of the company. What is your vision for the future of Microsoft?
We continue to have the excitement about software and software-led services and how they are going to help people in so many different ways. Bill Gates would describe the vision of the company at this point of time as the digital decade; he outlined that in the year 2000. Our vision is to move along that promise of the digital decade. In the context of the Microsoft business division, we are focusing on how our investments help enable people-ready businesses. If you use software capabilities to empower people in business, you empower the success of business. And that is a fundamental belief that goes back to the (original) vision: a computer on every desk and in every home. We were excited about it then because it was about empowering people, and that enthusiasm is still there today.We are in the midst of the most significant product innovation pipeline in the history of our company. We will be introducing the Office 2007 system and Windows Vista, and the Microsoft Dynamics product line. More than 20 major product launches are coming to the market during this period of time.Generally, innovation is seen as more of a small company thing. For a company as large as yours, how difficult is it to be innovative?I don’t think it’s difficult for us to be innovative because innovation comes from great thinking, and great thinking comes from very talented people. Take Microsoft Office OneNote. Chris Pratley (group product manager), who is here with me today, conceived of the idea that people really wanted to turn paper-based note-taking into a digital form that would be far more useful and far more acceptable. So, he took the initiative and, with a great team of people, created OneNote. That’s how innovation happens. I’m very excited about the things that we can do in the company to bring new innovations.Microsoft has, by far, the most expensive investments in pure software research of any company or organisation. A company like IBM, which was viewed as a strong research company, is no longer as committed to software research.The general perception is that Microsoft is slowing down in terms of coming out with defining software. Other than Windows and Microsoft Office, which you played a great part in developing and marketing way back in the 1980s, the only other mass-appeal software was probably Internet Explorer…No, I certainly wouldn’t agree with that. Take, for example, Xbox 360 — the innovations that are part of Xbox 360 are amazing. To think that Microsoft, which wasn’t even in the game console business five years ago, would in the next year or two become the likely worldwide leader in game consoles, that’s amazing. Take phones and mobile devices. This year, we will have more Microsoft smart phones and pocket PC phones than BlackBerrys. That comes from great work on innovative software.Some of the perception that Microsoft is slowing down is because they (critics) focus on one area and think, well, maybe, that product is later than it should be. But when you think about the pipeline of product innovations that are coming to market during this 18-month period, I think that perception will change a great deal.
So are they into some serious innovations...
That makes me think is MICROSOFT(MS)running out of ideas..with the growing stiff compatetion for them from equally tough giants such as yahoo,google and aol who are equally running out of ideas...Microsoft is running low on even retaining itz market at the global level...
Having established a massive customer base some of whom are loyalism to Microsoft is at par with their patriotism to their countries MS needs to bring out not just little difference but differences that can make their counterparts stumble to them...
For this they ought to be not just different but bring in some thing out of the blue...something as wierd as the blogging concept...
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