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COPYRIGHT 1991 Mendham Technology Group
The Bill Gates 'memo' first surfaced as a lead article by Lee Gomes in the San Jose Mercury News ('Microsoft's Gates Eyes Challenges,' Tuesday June 18, 1991. After the story ran, the complete memo was faxed to anyone requesting it by Microsoft's public relations firm, Waggener Edstrom. (All copies bore Waggener's date stamp along the bottom edge.) It subsequently became page-one news in nearly every computer industry journal and the subject of much editorializing.
In this one meandering piece, Gates manages to insult IBM's OS/2 programming expertise, pre-announce Microsoft's NT product, and expose Borland's (until-now) secret plan to add word processing to the upcoming Windows version of its Quattro Pro spreadsheet.
We read the Gates memo in its entirety, and have to say it looks more like a deliberate plant than a 'leak.' Who was this memo written for? "This is a very serious lawsuit" is not the way we would expect Gates to describe the Apple suit (for example) to his VP of Applications Mike Maples. And, can anyone picture Gates telling Sr. Systems VP Steve Ballmer "I know we don't get unfair advantages in any of the markets we are in." If not Microsoft's generals, then who was this memo written for? You be the judge...
(Note: The Gates memo has been reprinted here for your evaluation just as we received it, including misspellings.)
Bill Gates May 16, 1991
Prologue: The Reason for this memo
Every year I set aside at least one "think week" to get away and update myself on the latest technical developments-reading PhD theses, using competitive products, reading books, newsletters and anything I can get my hands on. Several valuable thoughts have come out of these retreats (tables for Word, outlining in Excel, treating DOS as more of an asset), however the complexity of the industry and it's technology means that a lot of my time is spent just trying to keep up rather than coming up with new product ideas. It is no longer possible for any person, even our "architects", to understand everything that is going on.
Networking, processors, linguistics, multimedia, development tools, and user interfaces are just a subset of the technologies that will effect Microsoft. My role is to understand enough to set direction. I enjoy these weeks a great deal-not because I get away from the issues of running Microsoft but rather because I get to think more clearly about how to best lead the company away from problems and towards opportunities. A lot of people choose things for me to read. By the end of the week I make an effort to synthesize the best ideas and make our technical strategy clear.
This year I decided to write a memo about overall strategy to the executive staff. As we have grown and faced new challenges my opportunities to speak to each of you directly has been greatly reduced. Even the aspects of our strategy that remain unchanged are worth reinforcing.
In the same way that DEC's strategy for the 80's was VAX-one architecture, one operating system-our strategy for the 90's is Windows-one evolving architecture, a couple of implementations. Everything we do should focus on making Windows more successful.
A source of inspiration to me is a memo by John Walker of Autodesk called "Autodesk: The Final Days" (copies available from Julie G.) It's brilliantly written and incredibly insightful. John hasn't been part of Autodesk management for three years and hasn't attended any management meetings for over two years, so he writes as an outsider questioning whether Autodesk is doing the right things. By talking about how a large company slows down, fails to invest enough and loses sight of what is important, and by using Microsoft as an example of how to do some things correctly he manages to touch on a lot of what's right and wrong...
Read the full article for free courtesy of your local library.
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