The Microsoft Way: The Real Story of How the Company Outsmarts Its Competition [Hardcover]

What I found odd was the amount of personal opinion included in the book rather than making this a more objective look at Microsoft. I'm not a Microsoft basher by any means - I use the products every day, program in VB, Microsoft's proprietary language, and genuinely like many of their products. I was just surprised to see the author include many personal opinions, blatantly claiming unfairness towards Microsoft when the context of the discussion already showed his point.

This personalization led me to reduce 4 stars to three. After a while it's just distracting and I had an urge to yell "Shut up and tell the story!" The story is very interesting, and I do recommend reading it. Just don't be surprised if you want to tell the author to shut up once in a while.

This is a `must-read' book for several different categories of people- businessmen, scholars, students and even philosophers- simply because it has a relevant message for just about everyone. However, it is scarcely what one would call a `conventional commentary', which may help explain why its central conclusion is so much at odds with conventional wisdom- that Microsoft (the software behemoth whose meteoric success in the brave new world of software technology is comparable only to the equally meteoric rise in the numbers of its detractors, who have accused the company of every conceivable unfair trade practice) did not acquire its dominant position through any illegal subterfuge or monopolistic bulldozing; rather, its success can be attributed to certain well-defined fundamentals, which, if understood and implemented properly (as Microsoft has obviously done), could well serve as the business model for other software companies, and perhaps for other companies that are likely to bloom in the uncertain economic future being shaped by rapidly emerging technologies.

As a social commentary, the biggest contribution of this book is that it offers a window to our lop-sided value system when we deal with fuzzy notions like `intelligence' and `smart'. As Mr. Stross, the author, points out, society's unfavorable perception of Microsoft is inextricably linked with the rampant anti-intellectualism pervasive in American society. This is not so far-fetched! After all, we accept without question that Michael Jordan should make hundreds of millions of dollars because he has the extraordinary athleticism to jump and shoot a basket ball better than anyone else, yet the American public has never quite come to grips with the notion that a group of `eggheads' and `nerds' (a description oft used for Microsoft employees) can rake in billions of dollars simply because they can think better than others. Perhaps the most telling conclusion of this book is also one we would do well to remember -that ``Microsoft's principal assets, in fact, are the collective craniums of (Bill) Gates and his employees".

However intelligence and smarts are by themselves no guarantee of success. And this is where the book becomes an invaluable resource as a business guide on ``How to manage smart people" and "How to look ahead and plan for tomorrow". The detailed account of how Microsoft dealt with the CD-ROM technology- investing millions of dollars into research and development for the production of its multimedia encyclopedia, MS Encarta and pushing for standards at a time when the fledgling technology was so new that there was no certainty it would even survive, - is a valuable case-study for the business student and historian on the challenges and risks (and subsequently the huge payoffs, if successful) involved in bringing new technology into the consumer marketplace.

In addition to these valuable insights into how and why Microsoft is successful, the book is a fascinating historical document, with riveting case studies. The battle for financial software market that Microsoft fought (and mostly lost) to a smaller, but nimble and quick-thinking Intuit, reads like a story. There are equally interesting accounts of how Microsoft tries to deal with the PC-TV merger and how it prepares itself for the uncertain future awaiting all in ``The Era of the Internet".

We may, of course, choose to agree or disagree with Mr. Stross on whether to `convict' or `acquit' Microsoft of the charges often leveled against it- but we cannot help but accept his advice on what we should learn from Microsoft:

".....(we must) overcome our instinctive antipathy toward smarts.....We can see in their (Microsoft's) experience the attention they devote to thinking.....They act with provisional answers, knowing that experience will feed back to provide new input into an unending process of reevaluation and revision."

A simple lesson that could serve not only as a recipe for running a successful business but could well form the cornerstone of a personal philosophy in our daily life