mini-MBA

Whether we like it or not, we're forced to attend the damn course I'm currently sitting on. The finance day was the most surprisingly interesting - not because of the topic, really, but because of the excellent lecturer.

I've actually been thinking about Microsoft quite a bit. It all started with one of the readings, the introduction chapter to "The Innovator's Dilemna: when new technologies cause great firms to fail" by C. Christensen. I guess this is nothing new for those of you who've been in business school recently, but it struck about how relevant it really was, especially wrt the international group. The basic ideas are, "there is something about the way decisions get made in successful organizations that sows the seeds of eventual failure". "good management" practices are eventually terrible. the problem is that successful companies don't invest in 'disruptive technologies' because 1) of lower margins, lower profits are typical of disruptive technologies (at least at first) 2) they're first commercialized in emerging or insignificant markets and 3) they're usually initially embraced by the least profitable customres in a market. "the larger and more successful an organization becomes, the weaker the argument that emergingin markets can remain useful engines for growth.

Doesn't that sound like the prepay hotmail model? Think about it - think Atlantis, think Avatars, think 3 degrees, think Google, think Netscape, think just about anything that didn't come out of top-down Redmond strategy meetings.

The other funny reading is a paper on how Microsoft teams operate! you'd be surprised how every single course seems to pick on the company - whether it be from a corporate strategy point of view, monopoly and bundling pov, large margins, corporate culture... this one details the product life cycle and all the things that have become second nature. it's quite fun to see it dissected by someone else actually. unfortunately it's a bit outdated and doesn't cover at all the challenges of web product development. it also makes it look like things are running much less chaotically than they actually are !


finally, i've had some requests re: what I'm reading these days. I finished the Sally Hacker sociology of women and technology (very good, strong recommendation). I skimmed through one on women and citizenship in europe (boring), read through one on Africa's science and technology policies (ok, very specialized), and i'm currently in the middle of Max Weber's "The protestant ethic & the spirit of capitalism". very famous book on how protestant (specifically lutheran & 'sects') influences created the environment that made harsh capitalism ok and acceptable. comparing with catholicism where interests and banking were pretty much banned by the church as evil, comparing with workers that worked only as hard as they needed to make a living, with the new ideas of doing god's work by working extremely hard (work as a vocation) and accumulating wealth, and the new capitalist speeches on productivity. I thought it'd be dreadfully dry, but not at all, i'm actually enjoying it greatly. it's much more relevant to today's world even than I thought. And it's fascinating to see how quickly norms change.
It's interesting too to see such an official literature cover something I've always noticed, which is the relationship of different cultures with money - whereas in France it's vulgar, impolite to talk about money (and arrogant if you talk about it to flaunt it), in the US it's more along the lines of "why have money if you can't flaunt it", and it's definitely ok to ask people how much they paid for something or brag that you got such a great deal on such and such plane ticket, etc. interesting to experience and read about in someone else's words.

that's it for now. ciao ciao.