[font="Tahoma"]The reality is that MS has become the GE of the IT industry. The "core businesses" and "strategic direction" change depending on the perceptions and trends in the wider industry. As such, the next CEO will be whoever can sell the dream of making it (i.e., managing it to become) the most profitable. What is missing? A technology visionary who dares to dream big and defines the industry trends instead of following them.

The MS business strategy going back to 1980 is simple:

1) Find someone's mousetrap that is either struggling or has yet to catch on.

2) Purchase or license it.

3) Add features customers have been asking for.

4) Claim it as a MS innovation and MS product. With MS' name attached, retailers and distributors will push it.

5) Increase market share and eliminate the competition by bundling and tying the product to volume agreements.

6) Rinse and repeat steps 1 - 5.

The one major exception to the above was "windows" which instead followed a "make it look and behave like MAC OS" (1.0 - 2.0) and a "cheaper OS/2 than OS/2" strategy (3.x).

This strategy worked well in the era of non-connected PC's with a constrained SW distribution channel. Gates understood this and as Java and the internet grew, realized his business model was at threat. So he tried to 'transform' the company by tying up the internet with MS proprietary features. IOW: kill Netscape, kill Yahoo and we will win the Internet space and protect our model.

This strategy is not working so well in the era of the connected app world with legitimate competitors like Google and Apple, and too many start up developers to enumerate.

Why has Apple been so successful? Because a technology visionary (Jobs) set the direction and dared to take risks because he believed in his vision - regardless of what the investors or marketers said. That is what MS is missing. And I sincerly doubt they will pursue that in a CEO. It is such a shame that a company with so much talent could be managed into irrelevance.

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