Blocking breakthrough innovation

The announcement of Steve Ballmer’s retirement as CEO of Microsoft has been accompanied by the recital of a sad list of major innovations created by that company, but rejected by the management during his term of office and exploited successfully by competitors – notably by Apple.

The list includes the iPhone and the iPad. And they are probably just the tip of the iceberg. What’s more, the company did launch a stream of new products that failed.

Poor Ballmer [?] is by no means alone. He’s just more famous than the other CEOs who routinely block breakthrough ideas.

The central problem in innovation isn’t coming up with ideas, nor with implementing them. It’s with recognising and supporting them. After all, the more disruptive the idea, the less likely it is that consumer research will pick it out as a winner, and the more likely it is that it will contravene an existing mindset.   

Distressingly there’s no evidence that senior managers are any better at picking breakthrough winners than my mum.

So farewell, Steve Ballmer

I had looked forward to seeing Steve Ballmer, the CEO of Microsoft (who has recently announced that he is stepping down). He was guest speaker at a major Coca-Cola conference in the mid-90s that I was co-facilitating with Bill Boggs. At the time Microsoft was the hottest company on the planet.

In the event… I just thought he was preachy, screechy and dull.

I’m not really surprised that the company has performed so poorly over the past two decades. So poorly that Microsoft’s stock surged when he said he was off.