Diffusion confusion.
Back when it was just Microsoft v. Apple, I used to feel that the positions of companies on Rogers’ adoption curve was easier to figure out. Apple’s role was to serve Early Adopters, to bring cutting-edge, but not necessarily bleeding-edge technology to people. Microsoft’s role was to popularise leading-edge technology by selling it to the Early Majority onwards. While one role has the glamour, the other has the reward. In industry after industry this has proven to be true. The innovator rarely gets the big economic prize, that always goes to the one that brings innovation to the masses.
In some ways this is still very much the case. This is why for all of Apple’s success, they still only have around a 10% share of the PC market, while Microsoft still continues to dominate. However, things have gotten increasingly muddy in the last few years between Apple and Microsoft especially in the smartphone arena where Windows Mobile and prior to that Pocket/Palm PC were aimed squarely at Early Adopters, while the iPhone has really popularised smartphones.
Now with Google things are even muddier. Two recent releases are great examples of this for me. First Microsoft’s Songsmith which automatically generates music in various styles to accompany your singing. (Iain has a great writeup of this). I haven’t tried it yet but I love the idea. For me, it’s quite unexpected and niche. There’s clearly no huge market for this, but it’s an example of Microsoft innovating. Contrast that with Google’s recent Latitude announcement which will join the 2 or 3 billion other location-aware friend finding services currently available, but which will probably end up winning because it’s a better, easier-to-use, and more convenient implementation than the others.
In this case, Google is actually being truer to its core position in the market than Microsoft. As Om Malik wrote earlier, Google hasn’t really ever been the innovator. While its products are used by early adopters, it has largely built its business upon popularising and improving existing innovations. It’s Microsoft that has shifted and continues to shift its position, perhaps in response to criticism around a lack of innovation.
However, there are clearly several kinds of innovation. There is innovation of invention which has been Apple’s mode of innovation, and then there is innovation of improvement which has been Microsoft’s role but is rapidly becoming Google’s role. To me it’s critical to understand which mode is central to your brand’s purpose because lack of clarity and lack of focus here leads to damaging your brand and your business.
While Microsoft may yet have the resources to devote lots of time and effort to small initiatives like this, it will be known and paid much more for the work it will do on Windows 7 (and potentially the next versions of Office). While Songsmith is fantastic I wonder whether it (and other things like it) will really do any good for Microsoft’s image or their business. More worrying, I wonder whether it actually might do more harm because it diverts the best and brightest within the company away from the company’s core misson as well as muddying Microsoft’s role in the eyes of its customers.
What do you think?