Before I start this post, I must confess, that since childhood, like many others, @billgates has been a hero. I always dreamt of seeing him and had my brush with him, when I LIVE blogged a session which he chaired, while being felicitated by NASSCOM, in New Delhi.
When I was pursuing my bachelors, Microsoft was a name which resounded like a dream coming true and a company to work with.
A couple of days back when @billgates joined twitter, I was looking at what comments have people to make and it was interesting to see how someone who may not stand even an inch to where @billgates does (whatever it may be, I respect the man, a self made achiever). There were all sorts of comments starting from welcoming him, to people talking about their Apple iPODs and the downfall of the Microsoft era.
At a recent conference which I blogged, one of the highly placed speakers, Founder of a Cloud based business application services company from India, had a bold statement to make, that MS is going to be history soon. At that time, I may not have had the understanding of the real dynamics of his statement, but today as I get to know more about the deep mess, I realize how things have shaped up and being a person I am, I still think, MS has all the chances in the world to fight back.
While reading an interesting post by a previous MS employee at the New York Times as to how MS lead to creative destruction, I was not much shocked at the story, as it was something, I knew from my interaction with many similar others.
In multiple minds, while writing this post, I am an entrepreneur and run a startup and I understand how the leadership of a company truly affects the entire structure and hierarchy. The mindset, the culture. Almost each one of us today has grown up, seeing the Office, Windows OS, though today the quality has gone down, there is no innovation and we have stopped expecting the days when Microsoft was supposed to be telling the future.
Though being an optimist, I again want the company to bounce back, fight the clutter. There is nothing really impossible. Its a shift required at a large scale, but that is what is required, otherwise this would make for the saddest story in business.
