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BusinessWeek: MS's new Soul, J Allard and How MS wanted to buy Nintendo
>> From businessweek.com:
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But maybe the point is that Microsoft needs to find its un-Vista. Several of them, in fact. The software giant is entering perhaps the greatest upheaval in its 30-year history. New business models are emerging--from low-cost "open-source" software to advertising-supported Web services--that threaten Microsoft's core business like never before. For investors to care about the company, it needs to find new growth markets. Its $44.3 billion in annual sales are puttering along at an 11% growth pace. Its shares, which soared 9,560% throughout the 1990s, sunk 63% in 2000 when the Internet bubble burst, and they have yet to fully recover.
The soul of the new Microsoft, though--its Geek 2.0--may just be Allard, the vice-president for design and development at its Entertainment & Devices unit. Allard looks and acts nothing like the prototypical Microsofty. Over the years he's swapped his plaid shirt and khakis--something of a Microsoft uniform--for edgy jackets made by Mark Ecko and other designer wear. He loads up his nine iPods, and now his Zune, with songs from hardcore bands like A.R.E. Weapons. And he's a downhill mountain biking maniac who has broken several bones after flying off his bike.
More important than his cool quotient, though, is that Allard gets things done--fast. Zune is only the latest example. At the turn of the decade, he led the software giant into the video game business with Xbox, a risky gambit that's just starting to pay off.
Just like the pre-Internet days, Microsoft was stuck thinking conventionally. Allard's bosses wanted to develop a video game version of Windows and get computer makers, such as Dell Inc., to build the device. But the industry didn't work that way. Hardware makers lose money on console sales and make it back from royalties on games. When it became clear that Microsoft had to enter the console business, building from scratch wasn't his superior's first choice. "I wanted to acquire Nintendo," recalls Rick Thompson, a vice-president who then ran the hardware business. Allard pushed to do the whole project in-house, and Microsoft ultimately vaulted ahead of Nintendo.
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