Is Ballmer the right man to run Microsoft? Opposing views
You know the business lore joke. The departing CEO meets his successor and hands him three envelopes to be opened in the prescribed order when trouble strikes. First crisis, the message in envelope #1 says: Blame your predecessor. Easy enough. Another storm, the the CEO opens the second envelope: Reorganize. Good idea. And when calamity strikes yet again, he reaches for the third: Get three envelopes…
...Spanning the January 2000 - May 2010 period. Microsoft’s stock dropped from $56 to $25.80... while Apple shares rose from $25 to $256.88...
One of Microsoft’s problems, paradoxically, is that it makes a lot of money. It can spend 15% of revenue in R&D—about $9B a year—with no market breakthrough to show for it. Great concept demos and prototypes… and then nothing. (How many new Googles, Facebooks, and Twitters could we VCs fund with that kind of money?…)
via: Mondaynote.com
Ballmer deserves the chance to fail at Microsoft mobile, or succeed if he can get beyond the denial. In Ballmer's defense, he inherited a mature rather than a growth company. Gates' aggressive competitive style suited growth Microsoft, but not really the more mature company. Growth companies look for new customers, while mature companies seek to keep them. The marketing approach is different. Microsoft needed a salesman, someone attuned to customers, to keep reselling the same products to the same people over and over.
via: Betanews.com
