4 ms·
Profit is a lagging indicator that often leads companies astray with short-term decision making at the expense of long-term relevance. Look at Apple before the
by fossuser 6y ago
Profit is a lagging indicator that often leads companies astray with short-term decision making at the expense of long-term relevance.
Look at Apple before the return of Jobs (though at that point, they were having profit issues too - but what lead to that was arguably short-term thinking).
Today, I'd argue Intel has made similar decisions that put them on a bad long term path.
MS would have stayed alive for a while, but been a shadow of their former self.
Obviously, it's hard to prove a counterfactual like this - but this is how I model it.
- rapsey 6y agoEnterprises are the slowest to change of all and this is MS bread and butter. I completely disagree MS was ever close to becoming irrelevant. Silicon valley is in it's own little world. The rest of the planet is firmly a MS customer. MS can take all the good ideas, implement them and sell them worldwide before a startup can get out of silicon valley. Case in point: slack vs. teams.
- fossuser 6y agoArguably that focus on O365 and Azure - the strategy that enabled Teams success was due to Nadella. You're right though - 'irrelevant' is too provocative and strongly worded. I'm more focused on future bets and trends. I think that trend shifted at Microsoft from trending towards future irrelevance back in the other direction, to being a competitive threat again.