Today, Microsoft commands the high ground of the infomation superhighway by owning the operating systems and basic applications programs that run on the world's 170 million computers. Beyond the unquestioned genius and vision of Bill Gates, what accounts for Microsoft's astounding success? For the first time, drawing on almost two years of on-site observation at Microsoft headquarters, eminent scientists Michael A. Cusumano and Richard W. Selby reveal many of Microsoft's innermost secrets. From this inside report based on forty in-depth interviews by authors who had access to confidential documents and project data, Cusumano and Selby identify seven complementary strategies that characterize exactly how Microsoft competes and operates. Bill Gates' "Brain Trust" of talented employees and exceptional management, "bang for the buck" competitive strategies, and clear oranizational goals produce an orientation toward self-critiquing, learning, and improving; a flexible, incremental approach to product development; and a relentless pursuit of future markets. To demonstrate how Microsoft puts these strategies into action, the authors define a further set of principles to reveal a style of leadership, organization, competition and product development which is both consistent with the company's loosely structured "programmer" culture and remarkably effective for mass-market production of software. Focusing specifically on the unique "synch-and-stabilize" approach to product development, they show how this vital capability enables Microsoft not only to build an increasing variety of complex features and end-products for fast-paced markets with short life cycles, but also to shape evolving mass markets and foster organizational learning. They examine how the flexibility of this process allows the company to "scale up" for larger and more complex projects -- a key asset that Microsoft must continue to cultivate in order to maintain its position as industry leader. Cusumano and Selby's masterful analysis successfully uncovers the distinctive way in which Microsoft has combined all of the elements necessary to get to the top of an enormously important industry and stay there. Managers in many different industries, especially those concerned with rapidly evolving complex product features and high technical standards, will discover hundreds of invaluable lessons in this superbly readable book.

MICROSOFT SECRETS: How the World's Most Powerful Software Company Creates Technology, Shapes Markets, and Manages People

Business & Money

Cusumano, Michael A.

Biography & History

Free Press

The authors of the bestselling Competing on Internet Time (a Business Week top 10 book) analyze the strategies, principles, and skills of three of the most successful and influential figures in business—Bill Gates, Andy Grove, and Steve Jobs—offering lessons for all managers and entrepreneurs on leadership, strategy and execution.
In less than a decade, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Andy Grove founded three companies that would define the world of technology and transform our lives. At their peaks, Microsoft, Apple, and Intel were collectively worth some $1.5 trillion. Strategy Rules examines these three individuals collectively for the first time—their successes and failures, commonalities and differences—revealing the business strategies and practices they pioneered while building their firms.
David B. Yoffie and Michael A. Cusumano have studied these three leaders and their companies for more than thirty years, while teaching business strategy, innovation and entrepreneurship at Harvard and MIT. In this enlightening guide, they show how Gates, Grove, and Jobs approached strategy and execution in remarkably similar ways—yet markedly differently from their erstwhile competitors—keeping their focus on five strategic rules.
Strategy Rules brings together the best practices in strategic management and high-tech entrepreneurship from three path-breaking entrepreneurs who emerged as CEOs of huge global companies. Their approaches to formulating strategy and building organizations offer unique insights for start-up executives as well as the heads of modern multinationals.

Strategy Rules: Five Timeless Lessons from Bill Gates, Andy Grove, and Steve Jobs

Yoffie, David B.

Harper Business

A trio of experts on high-tech business strategy and innovation reveal the principles that have made platform businesses the most valuable firms in the world and the first trillion-dollar companies. Managers and entrepreneurs in the digital era must learn to live in two worlds—the conventional economy and the platform economy. Platforms that operate for business purposes usually exist at the level of an industry or ecosystem, bringing together individuals and organizations so they can innovate and interact in ways not otherwise possible. Platforms create economic value far beyond what we see in conventional companies.
The Business of Platforms is an invaluable, in-depth look at platform strategy and digital innovation. Cusumano, Gawer, and Yoffie address how a small number of companies have come to exert extraordinary influence over every dimension of our personal, professional, and political lives. They explain how these new entities differ from the powerful corporations of the past. They also question whether there are limits to the market dominance and expansion of these digital juggernauts. Finally, they discuss the role governments should play in rethinking data privacy laws, antitrust, and other regulations that could reign in abuses from these powerful businesses. 
Their goal is to help managers and entrepreneurs build platform businesses that can stand the test of time and win their share of battles with both digital and conventional competitors. As experts who have studied and worked with these firms for some thirty years, this book is the most authoritative and timely investigation yet of the powerful economic and technological forces that make platform businesses, from Amazon and Apple to Microsoft, Facebook, and Google—all dominant players in shaping the global economy, the future of work, and the political world we now face.

The Business of Platforms: Strategy in the Age of Digital Competition, Innovation, and Power

Gawer, Annabelle

Business Culture

Though Japan has successfully competed with U.S. companies in the manufacturing and marketing of computer hardware, it has been less successful in developing computer programs. This book contains the first detailed analysis of how Japanese firms have tried to redress this imbalance by applying their skills in engineering and production management to software development. Cusumano focuses on the creation of "software factories" in which large numbers of people are engaged in developing software in cooperative ways--i.e. individual programs are not developed in isolation but rather utilize portions of other programs already developed whenever possible, and then yield usable portions for other programs being written. Devoting chapters to working methods at System Developing Corp., Hitachi, Toshiba, NEC, and Fujitsu, and including a comparison of Japanese and U.S. software factories, Cusumano's book will be important reading for all people involved in software and computer technology, as well as those interested in Japanese business and corporate culture.

Japan's Software Factories: A Challenge to U.S. Management

Industries

Oxford University Press

As we continue in an era of simultaneous innovation and commoditization, enabled by digital technologies, managers around the world are asking themselves "how can we both adapt to rapid changes in technology and markets, and still make enough money to survive--and thrive?" To provide answers to these important and urgent questions, MIT Sloan School of Management Professor Michael Cusumano draws on nearly 30 years of research into the practices of global corporations that have been acknowledged leaders and benchmark setters--including Apple, Intel, Google, Microsoft, Toyota, Sony, Panasonic, and others in a range of high-technology, services, and manufacturing industries. These companies have also encountered major challenges in their businesses or disruptions to their core technologies. If we look deeply enough, he contends, we can see the ideas that underpin the management practices that make for great companies, and drive their strategic evolution and innovation capabilities. From his deep knowledge of these organizations, Cusumano distills six enduring principles that he believes have been--in various combinations--crucial to their strategy, innovation management practices, and ability to deal with change and uncertainty. The first two principles--platforms (not just products), and services (especially for product firms)--are relatively new and broader ways of thinking about strategy and business models, based on Cusumano's latest research. The other four--capabilities (not just strategy or positioning), the "pull" concept (not just push), economies of scope (not just scale), and flexibility (not just efficiency)--all contribute to agility, which is a mix of flexibility and speed. Many practices associated with these ideas, such as dynamic capabilities, just-in-time production, iterative or prototype-driven product development, flexible design and manufacturing, modular architectures, and component reuse, are now commonly regarded as standard best practices. These six enduring principles are essential in a new world dominated by platforms and technology-enabled services.

Staying Power: Six Enduring Principles for Managing Strategy and Innovation in an Uncertain World (Lessons from Microsoft, Apple, Intel, Google, ... (Clarendon Lectures in Management Studies)

Competing on Internet time means competitive advantage can be won and lost overnight. In this penetrating analysis of strategy-making and product innovation in the dynamic markets of commercial cyberspace, bestselling Microsoft Secrets co-author Michael Cusumano and top competitive strategy expert David Yoffie draw vital lessons from Netscape, the first pure Internet company, and how it has employed the techniques of "judo strategy" in its pitched battle with Microsoft, the world's largest software producer.From on-site observation and more than 50 in-depth interviews at Netscape and other companies, Cusumano and Yoffie construct a blueprint meticulously detailing how the fastest-growing software company in history has competed on Internet time by moving rapidly to new products and markets, staying flexible, and exploiting leverage that uses the weight of its giant rival Microsoft against it. The main source of Netscape's leverage, they argue, has been its skill in designing products that run on multiple operating systems. Microsoft has responded with judo techniques in kind.Managers in every high-tech industry will discover a wealth of new ideas on how to create and scale-up a new company quickly; how to compete in fast-paced, unpredictable industries; and how to design products for rapidly evolving markets. The lessons that Cusumano and Yoffie derive from Netscape's contest with Microsoft go far beyond start-ups and Internet software. Small companies in any industry and powerful, established firms alike will welcome the principles the authors formulate from this David-and-Goliath-like struggle. Competing on Internet Time is essential and instructive reading for all managers, engineers, and entrepreneurs who want to succeed in ultra-fast-paced markets.

Competing On Internet Time: Lessons From Netscape and Its Battle With Microsoft

Illustrates the benefits of multi-project management

Thinking Beyond Lean: How Multi Project Management is Transforming Product Development at Toyota and O

Kentaro, Nobeoka

Details the Internet software company's product development and marketing strategies

Competing on Internet Time: Lessons From Netscape & Its Battle with Microsoft

Yoffie, David

Computers & Technology

Today, Microsoft commands the high ground of the information superhighway by owning the operating systems and basic applications programs that run on the world's 170 million computers. Beyond the unquestioned genius and vision of Bill Gates, what accounts for Microsofts astounding success? Drawing on almost two years of on-site observation at Microsoft headquarters, eminent scientists Michael A. Cusumano and Richard W. Selby reveal many of Microsoft's innermost secrets. This inside report, based on forty in-depth interviews by authors who had access to confidential documents and project data, outlines the seven complementary strategies that characterize exactly how Microsoft competes and operates, including the "Brain Trust" of talented employees and exceptional management; "bang for the buck" competitive strategies and clear organizational goals that produce self-critiquing, learning, and improving; a flexible, incremental approach to product development; and a relentless pursuit of future markets. Cusumano and Selby's masterful analysis successfully uncovers the distinctive way in which Microsoft has combined all of the elements necessary to get to the top of an enormously important industry -- and stay there.

Microsoft Secrets: How the World's Most Powerful Software Company Creates Technology, Shapes Markets and Manages People

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Cusumano, Michael A.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Cusumano, Michael A.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Cusumano, Michael A.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

MICROSOFT SECRETS: How the World's Most Powerful Software Company Creates Technology, Shapes Markets, and Manages People

Strategy Rules: Five Timeless Lessons from Bill Gates, Andy Grove, and Steve Jobs

The Business of Platforms: Strategy in the Age of Digital Competition, Innovation, and Power

Japan's Software Factories: A Challenge to U.S. Management

Staying Power: Six Enduring Principles for Managing Strategy and Innovation in an Uncertain World (Lessons from Microsoft, Apple, Intel, Google, ... (Clarendon Lectures in Management Studies)

Staying Power: Six Enduring Principles for Managing Strategy and Innovation in an Uncertain World (Lessons from Microsoft, Apple, Intel, Google, ... (Clarendon Lectures in Management Studies)

Competing On Internet Time: Lessons From Netscape and Its Battle With Microsoft

Thinking Beyond Lean: How Multi Project Management is Transforming Product Development at Toyota and O

Competing on Internet Time: Lessons From Netscape & Its Battle with Microsoft

Microsoft Secrets: How the World's Most Powerful Software Company Creates Technology, Shapes Markets and Manages People