Steve Ballmer recently presented a widely advertised talk at the Harvard School of Management. The title of the talk was “How not to be Afraid of Looking Back”. It has been rumoured that Ballmer, who is only 57, is to be appointed Dean of the Harvard Business School given his superb management experience and insights in refusing to look to the future.
Steve Ballmer was certainly not afraid of looking back. He refused to pay attention to what Steve Jobs was doing because compared to Microsoft Steve Jobs was a nobody. Microsoft had a market capitalization of about $500 Billion, the largest company in the world (sometime called “The Evil Empire”) while Apple was worth about $15 Billion. Even Nokia and Dell were bigger than Apple.
Ballmer was convinced Steve Jobs was not worth bothering about. Ballmer missed every major trend in technology because he believed they were not so important for the “The Evil Empire”. It is not that Ballmer didn’t try something new. When he tried something new, like Windows Vista, the public lined up around the block to trade it in. Ballmer could not understand social networking and sometime he could not understand the customers. He completely misjudged the iPhone and the iPad, which he thought were consumer electronics toys. He always thought Microsoft was above consumer electronics and toys. Ballmer was more interested in complex product design just as everyone was turning toward simplicity. He entered some of the growing markets too late. Microsoft entered the search engine market with Bing. It was a complete disaster; it did not enter with a bang!.
In 2000, Microsoft made most of its money selling Microsoft Office and Microsoft Windows. At his retirement, Microsoft was still making most of its money the same way. Apple by his retirement was worth more than $500 Billion, the largest company in the world. Microsoft was worth little over $200 Billion.
