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July 07, 2004Shrink Microsoft's scope?One of the people I spoke with for today's story on Ballmer's memo was Michael Cusumano, an MIT professor and author of books including "Microsoft Secrets" and more recently "The Business of Software." Something interesting that I wasn't able to fit into the story: Cusumano agreed with Ballmer's assertion that it's important to look at the effect of costs on profit at this point in the company's life-cycle. But he said the company should be acting more aggressively by dropping some of the products and businesses least likely to contribute to the bottom line. While it's important for the company to try to grow beyond its money-making Windows and Office products, Cusumano said, he'd like to see Microsoft make "a smaller number of bets rather than betting across the whole universe." He added later, "There’s so much stuff that may never get anywhere. I think they could get rid of at least half of their products and they would be incredibly profitable and still growing." "It’s easy for companies to add things," he said. "It’s very hard to cut things. It really would take someone to come in from the outside with a fresh look and start really paring Microsoft down to the really promising businesses." Posted by Todd Bishop at July 7, 2004 10:38 AMComments
Time for Ballmer to go ! MS needs fresh minds in their exec/upper management team, not dinosaurs with their bully/tough-macho-men attitude. Posted by: ricardito at July 10, 2004 08:10 PMRespectfully, I think Mr. Cusumano is being very short-sighted. Microsoft operates somewhat like a VC spending its money on internal projects. No one tells the good VC to stop investing in new ventures because they know for every 10 failures they have one home run whose return far exceeds all of the investments combined. Microsoft has proven they are much more capable of managing a large number of projects when compared to other big companies, I think because of their unique vision and management style, and as such they should continue to invest broadly. Imagine if they didn't. Where'd they their money? In CDs?!? If they don't continue to invest like they do, they'll miss the next really big thing(s) and become just another irrelevent company 10 to 20 years from now like so many other companies that look to maximize profit for the short term. Posted by: Mike Schinkel at July 12, 2004 12:18 AMI work for Microsoft and I want a smaller, leaner, meaner, focused Microsoft. We have too many employees with meandering product focus. I created a blog to spout my ideas at http://minimsft.blogspot.com/ and I hope other employees will starting thinking about what they can do to make Microsoft smaller (and whether this is the company they really want to stay at). Posted by: Mini-Microsoft at July 18, 2004 06:57 PMPost a comment
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