#1st and foremost, Microsoft has been a leader in the tech industry, and has created great patterns and code for the rest of us to compete with. #2nd MS you ne

#1st and foremost, Microsoft has been a leader in the tech industry, and has created great patterns and code for the rest of us to compete with. #2nd MS you need to take more risks. maybe the MS brand name is not the place to do it, but you have amazing research going on and no place to see how it plays out in the marketplace. find an avenue to test markets like startups do. try things and be willing to fail. in racing if you don't spin out at least once you aren't trying hard enough. Apple jokes about AppleTV as a hobby, but it's a good example of an Apple product that has yet to succeed, even though so many of them have worked. at least Apple is both focused, and taking risks. #3rd MS your largest competitor is yourself, you have nothing to fear but your own products. you will be a better company if you invite competition into your marketplace. heck if a good competitor comes along, you can do what other large companies do and buy them. and you'll create a reward system for innovators to flock to your set of platforms. on this note, i challenge you to open source or share source on legacy code. why keep the code closed on win 3.11, dos, win95, win98, win2000, winxp? let the market place take that code and do something with it. then buy the interesting companies. #4 get out there and have some fun. to much of what MS does is profit motivated. do something inspirational, just for the fun of it, just for the geekery of it. it will effect your brand in a positive way. #5 sell software for linux. great software will win on any platform, you don't need lockin. you just need great products. maybe sell directx for linux. embrace choice. #6 give away an operating system, that has an app store and make it easy for developers to sell and update their code on those machines. think Steam + iTunes + Windows.