Where are the Dick Brasses at IBM, Oracle, SAP, HP….?

Dick Brass, as in the Microsoft executive who wrote an Op-ed in the New York Times

“Unlike other companies, Microsoft never developed a true system for innovation. Some of my former colleagues argue that it actually developed a system to thwart innovation.”

“Microsoft’s huge profits — $6.7 billion for the past quarter — come almost entirely from Windows and Office programs first developed decades ago.”

But, spurred by Google, Apple, Sony, salesforce.com, Microsoft is actually miles ahead compared to so many of the other big tech firms.

I wish the other bigger vendors had the cajones to acknowledge they similarly mostly live off profits from software 15- 20 years old, from consultants which implement that old software and provide services from data centers which were designed during the Cold War. And that they are living proof of Clayton Christensen’s Innovator’s Dilemma – the system that many large companies develop to “thwart innovation”.  If they did that would put them on the path to real innovation, rather than pretending their financial results are proxy for innovation.