The Future According to Microsoft

Proud Tower: Globalization succeeds, the workforce organizes itself into hierarchical, vertically-integrated global mega-organizations, created by increasingly integrative M&A activities, and populated by Organization Man 2.0.

Continental Drift: Globalization fails, the workforce organizes itself in large, intra-national corporations whose agendas are subservient to national agendas

Frontier Friction: Globalization fails, the workforce organizes itself into anarchic, non-hierarchical and fluid forms

Freelance Planet: This assumes more and more people will become wholly or partially free agents and organize themselves outside of corporations. This is the scenario that drives most of my thinking, for example in my cloudworker series of articles.

The Top-Right Quadrant Effect: When you make up quadrant diagrams, how you orient axes, and in particular what you put in the psychologically critical upper right corner is often revealing. For pretty much the entire Web 2.0 world, and certainly for companies like Google and Facebook, Freelance Planet would have been in the top right. European, Chinese and Indian companies might want to see Continental Drift in the upper right. For Microsoft, I strongly suspect that an enterprise-heavy globalized world is front and center, despite the authors' protests that their work is scenario agnostic. This isn't really a confirmation bias: it makes sense to play to your strengths and prepare for success. It would be dumb of Microsoft not to subconsciously pay the most attention to Proud Tower. That's the scenario they are positioned to profit from the most.

Pragmatism, not Religion: The second interesting point about this framing is that it has four quadrants, not one grand vision. It confirms what we all knew: Microsoft is intensely pragmatic. You will not find don't be evil type exhortations at Microsoft simply because they don't operate by religious doctrines the way Google seems to. They are as willing to look at scenarios they like as ones they don't like. More religious companies like Apple and Google, as well as open source movements, operate by one overarching storyline for the future, one that results from religious values like don't be evil or design above all or information wants to be free. In their monomyths, the "good" scenarios ought to eventually prevail. Being able to think around 4 distinct classes of futures (even if they prefer one) is both a strength and a weakness: the strength is that Microsoft is often the player in the IT economy with the clearest view of reality, with the greatest survivability and tactical maneuverability. The weakness is that Microsoft never burns bridges; never commits with wholehearted religious fervor in just one direction. Even big moves like .NET often lack the clear conceptual integrity that comes from religion-inspired design. This means, despite the awesome power of the company, that the inherently hedging-driven strategic culture will never make a totally new future happen by sheer force of corporate will and vision. Simply put, Microsoft lacks the mindset to put all eggs in one basket or bet the farm.

The Ruling Dichotomies: To paraphrase George Box, all dichotomies are wrong, some dichotomies are useful. You could critique the framing very easily (I can think of ways you can have both mega corporations and free-agent workforces or neither globalization or regionalism), but metaphysical cleverness is not the point. Though there is some justification presented for the dichotomies chosen, it is clear that Microsoft's DNA led to the bubbling up of these 2 variables. Assessing all variables purely objectively, as say the CIA might do, in terms of magnitude of trends, might have led to a different top pair (maybe Water Wars and Peak Oil). Assessing all variables purely subjectively, in value-driven ways, would have surfaced variables that reflect governing ethical concerns (like Green and AIDS, say). Globalization and Free Agency bubbled up for Microsoft. This tells you they are primarily objective, but interested in what might impact them the most. There is no visible influence of powerful governing values in what they foreground. That is both the triumph and the tragedy of Microsoft: never viewing the world through the lens of an ideology means never being a victim of large-scale wishful thinking, but also never being the one to lead the charge in moral victories.

All Background, No Foreground: Scenario planning is a form of incomplete story-telling. Full stories don't just have backgrounds; they have plot lines, characters, and strong commitments to some futures. Most big companies have romantic origin myths, a sense of purpose, and a sense of uniqueness behind their identities (usually the extension of archetypes derived from the personalities of founding figures). One of the most powerful strengths of Microsoft is a distinct lack of romanticism in their self-identity, and only a very weak sense of "manifest destiny." I can see a distinct Apple or Google or GNU "type" of person, but have never seen a detectable Microsoft "type" among the Microsoft people I know. Aside from a unifying pragmatism and skepticism, I find the Microsoft people I meet to be a very diverse lot. By contrast, you can often tell an Apple person a mile away. The Microsoft origin myth does not extrapolate powerfully into the future the way Google's or Apple's does. Again, a strength and a weakness. Big stories, with influential archetypes modeling governing values, can cause very powerful scripts to be successfully enacted. Equally, huge failures can result, since big foreground stories can lead to big background blind spots. Microsoft's lack of a story foreground, and over-development of multiple conflicting backgrounds tells you that they are unlikely to win or lose big in the future.

Listening to rather than Talking out the Future: Even the most faithful Microsoft fan would not accuse the company of being a classical technology innovator. Applying Kay's easier to invent the future quote, Microsoft participates in inventing the future by choosing among options created by others, throwing their weight behind what they like. Yes, some small technology innovations have emerged from Microsoft, but most of us admire Microsoft for rapidly copying (or acquiring) ideas from outside, and barreling out to market in record time with a sloppy version 1, and then blowing away the competition by version 3. Like Dell, Microsoft is a process innovator. There are small-minded people out there who don't see the strength of this, the kind of people who romanticize original technology innovators. But give Microsoft their due: what they do well is much harder than just coming up with a cool prototype. They have to truly watch the industry like hawks, and be ready to pounce on any emerging, potentially valuable space, corral some IP for bargaining, and get in the game with big stakes. This is not quite the opposite of "Not Invented Here" but a sort of "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" doctrine. We praise the open source world for "openness" but in many ways, Microsoft epitomizes a more pragmatic sort of open innovation. Don't forget, Microsoft participated in the open architecture PC when Steve Jobs was still tightly clutching the Apple design world to his chest. Us PC types got viruses, yes. We also got a huge, thriving DOS/Windows software world, half a bazaar, half a cathedral. Now Apple has gotten the Unix religion and powered ahead in openness, but Microsoft plugs away defining openness in its own way.