Microsoft - San Jose

Visit to the Microsoft Offices in San Jose. It was very interesting to hear from inside Microsoft as to how they approach entrepreneurship and innovation from such a large company. It was new information to me, as I don’t feel Microsoft is particularly good about showing it’s innovation, compared to companies such as Google, even though in some respects they act in similar ways.

We have heard a lot recently about how difficult it is for large companies to continue to innovate and keep market share when there are new companies able to come in with disruptive technologies. Microsoft appears initially to be too large for this to occur, but it was clear from this talk that they are fully aware of the fragility of their market, and need to keep on innovating, either internally or externally through other companies, which they ultimately may or may not buy.

All in all it was a great session, it was just unfortunate that we didn’t have more time for the discussions to continue, and even more unfortunate that we didn’t have time for a full tour of the building.