At a Gartner conference a few years ago, a client saw my Gartner badge while we were in the elevator and chided us for being disrespectful to Bill Gates during an interview that morning (and I was in the audience just like him during that interview!).
Icons are meant to be buffed, not questioned. I had that recurring feeling as I read this Information Week interview with Bill Gates that focuses on Microsoft Research.
Look, you have to be respectful of Bill and I am here about his charities and here about his global outlook...but what a lost opportunity to ask Bill:
a) why are only 15% of Microsoft revenues going in to R&D?
b) why does Microsoft Research only appear to have 600 employees out of its total employee base of over 60,000?
c) how efficient is the rest of the $ 6 b in R&D spend - or it mostly tweaking Office, MBS, SQL Server?
d) given the new economics coming out of the Valley, what is Microsoft doing to squeeze a lot more out of its R&D spend?
Consumers - all of us - spend $ 40 b a year with Microsoft. We should expect more innovation and R&D from it. And if they cannot deliver they should think about a dividend and let us innovate in our own ways. It is ok to be asking Bill tough questions about this.
