Collaboration Culture

Joe Wilcox of Jupiter’s Microsoft Monitor Research Service talks about MSFT’s collaboration culture within business groups and relates it to what former Apple executive Michael Mace wrote in his rant about Who Killed Apple Computer?:

From Collaboration: The Microsoft Way:
“Microsoft’s collaborative culture makes the company very responsive to competitive threats. The character also means Microsoft can quickly focus resources from multiple product divisions when executives see there is a need. These could be seen during the so-called browser wars with Netscape, when Microsoft rapidly churned out new Internet Explorer features and caught up with Netscape in about 18 months and three product versions…”

“Too often, success in any market has more to do with how well a business is run rather than how good the products are. Apple’s products often are more highly-regarded than Microsoft’s. High regard is fine, but in business sales count more; sales success is on Microsoft’s side. I believe the company’s collaboration culture is one of the major reasons.”

In general I would have to agree that this applies to any company or group. In addition, establishing a collaboration culture is not a technology problem, because as I said a few weeks ago, “…a healthy community doesn’t need a formalize process or a highly specialized set of tools to successfully collaborate.”

The collaboration culture needs to be fostered by good leadership. The solution will soon follow.