Experts Say Board Directors Must Adopt Open Innovation Mindset
Written By: Ben Forrest Postmedia Content Works
In more than a decade as CEO of Microsoft, Steve Ballmer steered what is now the largest software company in the world through year after year of double-digit growth, thanks largely to its ubiquitous Windows operating system and other proprietary products.
What he didn’t adequately prepare for, or adapt to, was the rise of mobile phones and cloud computing that competitors like Google, Apple and Amazon used to push a generation-defining technology icon to the brink of irrelevance.
“I regret that there was a period in the early 2000s when we were so focused on what we had to do around Windows that we weren’t able to redeploy talent to the new device called the phone,” Ballmer told analysts in 2013, just as he was about to retire and pass the reins to current CEO Satya Nadella.
It’s remarkable a tech company with such a high profile could have such conspicuous blind spots, but by the time Ballmer left the company Microsoft opted to reimagine itself entirely.
