Apr/10
25
Communities of Leadership: Ballmer’s (and Gates’s) Microsoft
1 Comment · Posted by Scott in Case Studies
Adding to our list of interesting communities of leadership, I nominate Microsoft, Steve Ballmer, CEO; Bill Gates, eminence grise.
My reasons for being interested in Microsoft include:
- For the at least the last ten years or so, Microsoft has been the world’s leading software company, with a dominance built on Windows and Microsoft Office.
- Now they are challenged to maintain that dominance. Googledocs is a strong emerging strong challenge to Office and Exchange, and it’s free to individuals (or cheap for enterprise clients?): the core challenge is to the business model.
- At the operating system level, Windows is still powerful, but what will the next generation of PC’s look like? Like iPads running an Apple OS? Like a mobile device running Android? Something running an open source product like Linux? Even if Microsoft can maintain leadership in operating systems, will it be able to charge anything for them?
- At $254 billion, Microsoft is the third most valuable public company in the world, according to Forbes’ recent ranking. It employed 88,180 people as of the latest statistics on its website. What will happen to this value and to these people’s livelihoods? Will the numbers grow or shrink? What will be the source of new value in the future?
- Microsoft is a genuinely global enterprise, with subsidiaries listed on its website for 109 countries. Its products are sold and used worldwide. That said, 61% of its employees, according to its website, are located in the U.S. Not one of its directors is recognizable for Asian roots. In what ways will the company continue to internationalise itself?
- Bill Gates, Microsoft’s founder, has embarked on a remarkable programme of “giving back” through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Given the Gates’s impressive activities as a “world citizens”, a big part of me wants Microsoft, and Bill and Melinda’s shareholding, to prosper. What is the influence of Bill and Melinda’s ideas on how the company does business day to day?
business · community · innovation · leadership · Microsoft · service · value
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