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July 23, 2004

MBA Lunch Series: Jim Allchin

The MBA executive lunch series continued today, this time in the form of Jim Allchin, Microsoft's pooh-bah in charge of platforms. Jim is very senior, very computer literate (the man has a Ph.D in Computer Science, for Pete's sake), and very smart.

Jim's been at MSFT since 1990; BillG recruited him away from now-defunct PC networking company Banyan. Bill's lure was that Jim could have more "impact on society" by coming someplace where the products enjoyed ultra-high distribution.

As a Product Planner (OK, as a Product Planner Intern), I have to confess that this argument is fairly compelling. About a week into my Microsoft internship I was chatting with Jeff Smith, another planner here in Office. Jeff had had recently come to work on Outlook after spending years in the MacBU. Jeff explained that he loved the Mac, but wanted to see his ideas get greater distribution and touch more users. "Apple does cool stuff," he said, "But if you're not clued in to the Mac market then no one ever hears about what you're up to."

Steve Jobs once said, "Real artists ship." Contained in that statement is the premise that conceiving an innovation or idea doesn't count - it needs to get released into the wild, and used, to be considered valid.

So isn't a corollary of this idea be that you owe a good idea the widest possible distribution?

I honestly don't know. There's a part of me which thinks that an innovation should be left alone on its product - indeed, it becomes part of the competitive advantage of the product. On the other hand, the folks at iCalShare would be well served if suddenly, Outlook users were able to publish and subscribe to .ics files as easily as iCal users. Indeed, you could argue that this influx of Outlook users would only improve the variety of .ics files available, thus giving a positive network effect to iCal users.

But then again, you wind up with, say, Apple (to pick on someone other than MSFT) improving Sherlock or announcing Dashboard, and the controversies that arose from each. Good ideas, each getting better distribution. Yes?

It's thorny.

Back to Jim: he exhorted all of us to "go where you'll learn the most, go where you'll have the most passion, and go where you'll have the most fun." He regaled us with stories about OS/2, Cairo, NT, XP and Longhorn. Some Linux chatter. He talked about Dave Cutler, and how he tried to retire a few years back ... but couldn't, because he got too bored away from the office. Apparently, Cutler kept coming back to his old office at Microsoft, and eventually walked in to Allchin's office and said, "Look, if I'm going to be here so much, you better start paying me again."

BTW, If you want an amazingly good read about Cutler and the creation of Windows NT, check out "Showstopper!" by G. Pascal Zachary.

In all, a thoughtful, engaging talk. It's amazing who you get to meet around here.

Posted by Gavin Shearer at July 23, 2004 5:34 PM. Posted to MSFT.

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