Strategic turnaround case-study: Microsoft

Innovation challenges

Rob 83-93
- per capita ability to get effective innovations into the market is doubful
- four core points
1. PC Software Centricity: core business
2. Post-PC World: stuck in the past
3. Monopoly Economics and Culture: un-viable monopoly business
4. Leadership: culture

Kanji 02-05
Past:
Now:
- Trends are shorter
-

Visionless Leadership

- loyalty over quality - compromising excellence, slow death!
- fretful reaction to challengers
- "Can you think of any other tech firm where the CEO could bungle the company's main product and still keep his job?"

Bill Gates:
- moved on now - "saving the world is more important than saving microsoft"
- innovative vision
- negative energy - "moved mountains to crush netscape"
- "his actions weren't very admirable"
- "there was never a lot to like about Bill Gates the businessman"

Finance Director

Financial leaders discuss their level of oversight and share the most important issues from their experiences in the CFO role:

"Just make sure your skill level meets the job competency levels the company desires. Do a Dunn & Bradstreet report on their performance. Make no mistake about it — large publicly traded companies are all about meeting financial performance goals, and if not, they fire someone."

"A CFO manages the organization's strategic value and that value is enhanced with its influence on HR, IT, risk management and insurance. Such functions should always report to the CFO, as they then bring the external strategy with customers in alignment with internal set up through administration and teams."

"For the CFO transitioning from a private company to a public one, the major change is that you become a high profile spokesperson for the public company — very different than a private company environment."

"...you are connected to every area of the company; your influence is felt everywhere."

Strategy by Michael Porter

At the World Innovation Forum, Michael Porter shared his perspectives on what he knows best:

What is strategy? "It's a complete and unique value proposition for a specific set of customers that distinguishes you from your competitors. You need renewed clarity of the fundamental purpose of your company and what makes you different."

What is innovation? "Non-incremental improvements in productivity, in the value chain or the product itself. Incremental improvement is something that can be done in predictable process. Innovation is something where you see a new combination or go in a different direction. The failures of innovation are that you can do something but it is not valuable, or you can do it but it is not affordable."

Is there good innovation and bad innovation? "Corporations have to examine what they do and find out whether they're creating real value with their innovations. Are the innovations we are making practical, and can they be delivered at a reasonable cost? If an innovation fails one of these tests, it is more likely a bad innovation."

British Budget 2010

The role of the Budget is to provide an update on the state of the economy and the public finances and to present new forecasts for each, to set out the Government's economic and fiscal objectives, to report on the progress the Government has made toward achieving its objectives, and to set out the further steps the Government is taking to meet them.

The Budget is the major financial and economic statement made each year by the Chancellor of the Exchequer to the Parliament. A guide to the Budget, including a list of all Chancellors since World War II is available on this website:
http://hm-treasury.gov.uk/budget.htm.

I'll try to update this post with my perspective of the budget.

The African Runner

Every morning, a gazelle wakes up knowing that it must run faster than the fastest lion, or die.
Every morning, a lion wakes up knowing that it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or starve.

- excerpt from an African Proverb