From a PC on every desktop to a services and devices company and now “productivity and platform company for the mobile-first and cloud-first world.”
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s long missive lays out where he’s taking the company.
It’s a radical shift from the company of the Gates and Ballmer years.
In order to deliver the experiences our customers need for the mobile-first and cloud-first world, we will modernize our engineering processes to be customer-obsessed, data-driven, speed-oriented and quality-focused. We will be more effective in predicting and understanding what our customers need and more nimble in adjusting to information we get from the market.
This describes a very different company from five years ago; it implies an end to bureaucracy and management conveniences like stack ranking; if Microsoft is really going to be more nimble, then it means a smaller, more focused management.
In 1995, Bill Gates turned Microsoft around in a few months when he realised the strategic mistake he’d made in underestimating the impact of the Internet, so the company has adapted quickly to dramatically changed times in the past.
Whether Microsoft can adapt and maintain its position in a computing world very different to the one it once dominated will be among the great business studies of our time.