Ask HN: What should Microsoft do to get its mojo back?

16 points

16 years ago

The recent NYTimes article has generated plenty of discussion about Microsoft, most of it negative. But instead of focusing on what they've done wrong, I'm curious what people think they should do to gain back some of the relevance they've lost. And please, no "Fire all the management" comments. Here are a few ideas to start the conversation for better or worse:

1) Streamline the product line. Get out of the markets where you've just gotten in from being panicked. This largely means the content businesses and probably music. Stop being so fucking insecure about businesses where arch rivals are doing well and identify markets to get in to where you already have a natural advantage. This probably means other business markets vs. consumer. Bing seems to be doing pretty well but it should just be a hobby. Just going through your main nav on Microsoft.com shows you're spread WAY too thin. There's over 100 products on there.

2) Redo your website and come up with a consistent look and feel for everything. Your branding totally needs to change to give people a new vibe about the company. For the amount of money you spend on marketing, your website sucks. Fire whoever is in charge of it and start over using some boutique firms in New York or S.V.

3) If you can't outright cut projects/products, spin them off and give them their own identity. McDonalds owns Chipotle but you wouldn't know it from Chipotle stores, their focus on organic meat, etc. Given the polarization of your brand, this could work well in other areas.

4) Invest in some yCombinator/TechStars type incubators and create a more well known pipeline to the startup community.

5) You generated a ton of bad karma by keeping IE6 around for 8 or 9 years. Seems silly, but you lose a lot of cool points and generate a ton of frustration among the developer community you're trying to woo. Make sure future versions of IE rock, maybe even go to a webkit rendering engine instead of what you've got now.

6) Flatten the organization, introduce some perks not even Google has and publicize the hell out of them. Encourage more employees to blog and be open about the culture there and the good aspects of working there. Make Microsoft a cool place to work again.

7) Put up a pirate flag a la Apple in the eighties or some other rebel move for show. You need to look like you have an edge to put your competitors on notice that you're still the 800 lb gorilla in the room and you intend on kicking some ass once again.

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