Microsoft's office: Why insiders think top management has lost its way

It seems like most of Microsoft wants Steve Ballmer to make a major change to Microsoft. I'd really like to see him follow the "New Detroit" idea and announce a major re-thinking of the company. But, I'm sure he won't. They'll complain, his approval ratings will get worse, Microsoft will decline, and he will stay in denial. Peter Drucker is rolling in his grave.

What I found most interesting about that article was how, unlike most articles on CNN, the comments were dominated by people saying approximately "Yes I actually worked there from xx to yy and I fully agree with the substance of this article."

I still don't get how all these articles frame the debate as Microsoft playing catch-up with all the "innovation" coming out of Apple? I get the management culture and internal struggles and "analysis paralysis" that comes with the cover-your-butt mentality, but as far as I can tell, Microsoft is one of the very few companies that has entire departments dedicated bringing cutting-edge technologies to market. The only other companies that comes close(that I've seen) are Google and perhaps Philips. Talk to researches at elite technology schools, and I would venture to guess that they would put Microsoft far ahead of Apple, and maybe Google, in the innovation race. However, if you talk management or P/E people, they would probably give you a different answer. So I guess I'm in agreement that there's an internal problem at Microsoft, but that it lies with the culture, not the actual scope of their ability to innovate.

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Yet Ballmer & Co. remain in denial, they say, because the great gushers of cash Windows and Office generate means they don't feel the urgency they otherwise would –shielded from the pain of its many disappointments by two of the more successful franchises in the history of business. """

That reminds me of an article about Pixar (which I can't find now) which talked about how the management team are especially careful to seek out problems when the company is being successful. If stuff is going well, it's easy to gloss over problems with morale, teamwork etc.