John Siracusa:
Microsoft’s mistake is subtle, but potentially fatal. It’s the seemingly reasonable assumption that defending its market position is the most important goal of any corporate strategy. Microsoft will fail by succeeding. Through its competent, intelligent, practiced execution of a well-honed plan to maintain its dominance, Microsoft will assure its eventual demise.
Put simply, to win in the long run, Microsoft must be willing to risk losing it all. It must be willing to put all its chips on the table, to throw away decades of hard-fought victories, proven technologies, and market-leading products. It must be willing to do what the long-extinct corporate giants of the past were not.
John wrote this over at Ars Technica…in 2005. Given Microsoft’s big bet on Surface, it’s a relevent piece that found itself trending high on Hacker News earlier this week.