Innovation

Innovation in one form or another can help a company become a leader in its industry, however once a company is at the top, staying there and not only innovating, but managing innovation to adapt to the ever-changing wants and needs of customers is the key. Getting to the top of an industry is difficult, but staying there is even harder. Innovation is not just about having good ideas; it takes good leadership and vision to make ideas come to fruition and knowing what the customer wants even before they know what they want. Innovation leads customers to what they want. Microsoft, under bad leadership and poor management of innovative ideas and not understanding customers wants has led it down its fall from grace. Microsoft will not be able to reinvent itself as an innovative company and will continue to be a follower in the industry it helped create.

Microsoft has a strong hold on the PC market for both consumers and businesses. Their success in this market of the industry is mainly due to their licensing agreements with PC manufactures for their Windows , Microsoft Office , and ServerTools. This agreement deterred other companies from entering this market and the monopoly hold Microsoft had on PC manufactures kept them at the top in the operating system market for a long time. These three products have kept Microsoft profitable for years, over half of its profit annually comes from the licensing and sales of these products. Microsoft was innovative at that time, not only with its products, but its ability to monopolize in the operating system market with its innovative products making their brand the standard for businesses.

To do this again, Microsoft will need to understand the movement away from the typical desktop or PC and be able to shift to cloud-based software and engineering. However, even in cloud based software, they are two years late to the party with Office 365. Even if late to the game, the products which should be innovative and superior to...