Microsoft is a hugely inno­v­a­tive com­pany, but the cul­ture that has devel­oped there has stunted or even thwarted its inno­va­tions, sug­gests for­mer Microsoft Vice Pres­i­dent Dick Brass. The ingre­di­ents of this cul­ture are numer­ous, but it has flour­ished largely because of the company’s struc­ture pre­vent­ing the devel­op­ment of “a true sys­tem for innovation”.

Not every­thing that has gone wrong at Microsoft is due to internecine war­fare. Part of the prob­lem is a his­toric pref­er­ence to develop (highly prof­itable) soft­ware with­out under­tak­ing (highly risky) hard­ware. This made eco­nomic sense when the com­pany was founded in 1975, but now makes it far more dif­fi­cult to cre­ate tightly inte­grated, beau­ti­fully designed prod­ucts like an iPhone or TiVo. And, yes, part of the prob­lem has been an under­stand­able cau­tion in the wake of the antitrust set­tle­ment. Tim­ing has also been poor — too soon on Web TV, too late on iPods.

Inter­nal com­pe­ti­tion is com­mon at great com­pa­nies. It can be wisely encour­aged to force ideas to com­pete. The prob­lem comes when the com­pe­ti­tion becomes uncon­trolled and destructive.

via @JohnGreenaway

Microsoft has responded offi­cially.