The Internet provides an echo chamber for innovation, but when companies with lots of money can afford to yell the loudest, then they end up having a great effect on the conversation, regardless of the merit of the message. When enough money is spent on the message, and the message is propagated widely enough, then community members will start believing it and echoing it back out into the community. This echo drowns out the other messages driven by merit and proper scientific study.


Microsoft has achieved “Success” in their products, not necessarily by merit or innovation, but by business practices. By using monopoly tactics to push their products, organizations cannot choose a platform based on merit (because traditionally there hasn’t been any).

Since Microsoft’s products are forced into popularity, individuals often perceive that the products are therefore “innovative”, and accepted by the community. This perpetuates a belief that Microsoft’s products are superior, and so functionality of these products are interpreted as being “standard”, and of high quality. Companies like Yahoo, Google or Apple that are demonstrating open innovation and community participation do not have their “standards” considered because of the perceived high quality of Microsoft’s work.

Microsoft could introduce questionable functionality into the next version of Office, and by nature of being the only enterprise office suite, would sell many copies and be judged a success. The functionality would be seen by the rest of the world as “innovative”, and use it as inspiration for further “innovation”. Some might point to the budget of Microsoft projects with regards to user feedback and focus, and explain that that demonstrates the value of Microsoft’s innovation, but Microsoft has a history of only publishing research that backs up their opinion and monopoly, rather than providing and discussing the results with a community. This constantly erodes any kind of credibility they might have in their field.

Microsoft also tends to flood the channels with so much noise that promotes their products that finding any balanced evidence or research into their products become difficult. This also perpetuates a mindset that “Since Microsoft provides the most successful (and therefore best) applications, those applications are the only ones I ever care to use”. This often shuts people out of thinking about whole new paths of innovation, as they are stuck in a Microsoft-centric world.

January 16th, 2008 by Jeremy Sisson | Trackback