If you could trade places with someone for one day, who would it be and why?
I wish to trade places with Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft and the most powerful Indian American in the tech industry. He is a person who despite not being an alumnus of IIT made it big, thus breaking the stereotype that top tech gurus of Indian origin must be from IITs. I want to poke around his mind and find out what made a non-IIT person a top business leader in the tech industry. Nadella has repeated "mobile first, cloud first" over and over again, clearly outlining his strategy and vision for the new Microsoft that will be platform agnostic. As a person who was following every development in the tech industry since 7 years, this direction for Microsoft is a welcome move that will work wonders in this era where everything and everyone is getting connected. Nadella is planning "to unlock the human capital at Microsoft" by forging a culture that is no longer insular in nature, promoting innovation and inter-divisional collaboration.
Learning more about his work style and vision for Microsoft are not the only reasons I want to switch places with him. I have certain business decisions to make on his behalf that I believe is necessary for Microsoft to grow and capture new markets. As Satya Nadella, I want to pacify shareholders' concern for the company's bottom line. For instance, when the ValueAct Capital hedge fund bought a $2 billion stake in Microsoft, they began to agitate for change that is aimed at short term benefits in order to maximize returns to the shareholders. But such short-sighted goals is bad for a company like Microsoft that is trying to reinvent itself in order to regain the consumer mind-share that it lost to Apple and Google in the 2000s . I will also persuade the stakeholders to agree to let Microsoft price the upcoming software upgrade competitively as nowadays it is clear that the old pricing policy will not work in this age of freemiums and cheap or free incremental upgrades. Subscription based pricing, which was successfully implemented for Office 365, will be tried across other applications. Thus I will convince the stakeholders to put more faith in the long term direction Nadella set out to achieve.
The next step on my agenda would be to build developers interest in different Microsoft OSes. In 2015 Microsoft is going to release Windows 10 that unifies all the 3 mediums of using an OS-Phones, tablets and desktops. Microsoft seriously lacks the interest among developers to create applications for tablet and phone. If Windows 10 needs to be successful, Microsoft will need to convince those developers that applications developed once will indeed work across all the 3 mediums, bringing down coding time and costs.
Even though hardware doesn't figure in Nadella's vision for the company, as Nadella I will make sure that the hardware division keeps growing. THough the Surface division had a rough start, with the sale of Surface Pro 3 the division is finally making immense progress. I will push the Surface division to grow for the next few years without cannibalizing the PC sales of OEM partners. Additionally the Nokia acquisition brought in hardware pundits, who need to be supported even if Microsoft bleeds money. Therefore creation of a flagship phone will help Microsoft demonstrate its capabilities to the smart phone market. Nadella's decision to scrap the high-end flagship, code named 'McLaren', showed Microsoft's disinterest to innovate, causing many fans to leave Windows Phone. This will cause Windows phone to lose market share,making Microsoft irrelevant in mobile. Hence I will reverse the earlier decision and release a high-end phone immediately.
These are the goals I plan to achieve by being Satya Nadella for a day. I believe my actions as the CEO will benefit Microsoft in the long run. Besides the knowledge I will gain over 1 day will help me become an innovative product manager in this post-PC era.
I wish to trade places with Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft and the most powerful Indian American in the tech industry. He is a person who despite not being an alumnus of IIT made it big, thus breaking the stereotype that top tech gurus of Indian origin must be from IITs. I want to poke around his mind and find out what made a non-IIT person a top business leader in the tech industry. Nadella has repeated "mobile first, cloud first" over and over again, clearly outlining his strategy and vision for the new Microsoft that will be platform agnostic. As a person who was following every development in the tech industry since 7 years, this direction for Microsoft is a welcome move that will work wonders in this era where everything and everyone is getting connected. Nadella is planning "to unlock the human capital at Microsoft" by forging a culture that is no longer insular in nature, promoting innovation and inter-divisional collaboration.
Learning more about his work style and vision for Microsoft are not the only reasons I want to switch places with him. I have certain business decisions to make on his behalf that I believe is necessary for Microsoft to grow and capture new markets. As Satya Nadella, I want to pacify shareholders' concern for the company's bottom line. For instance, when the ValueAct Capital hedge fund bought a $2 billion stake in Microsoft, they began to agitate for change that is aimed at short term benefits in order to maximize returns to the shareholders. But such short-sighted goals is bad for a company like Microsoft that is trying to reinvent itself in order to regain the consumer mind-share that it lost to Apple and Google in the 2000s . I will also persuade the stakeholders to agree to let Microsoft price the upcoming software upgrade competitively as nowadays it is clear that the old pricing policy will not work in this age of freemiums and cheap or free incremental upgrades. Subscription based pricing, which was successfully implemented for Office 365, will be tried across other applications. Thus I will convince the stakeholders to put more faith in the long term direction Nadella set out to achieve.
The next step on my agenda would be to build developers interest in different Microsoft OSes. In 2015 Microsoft is going to release Windows 10 that unifies all the 3 mediums of using an OS-Phones, tablets and desktops. Microsoft seriously lacks the interest among developers to create applications for tablet and phone. If Windows 10 needs to be successful, Microsoft will need to convince those developers that applications developed once will indeed work across all the 3 mediums, bringing down coding time and costs.
Even though hardware doesn't figure in Nadella's vision for the company, as Nadella I will make sure that the hardware division keeps growing. THough the Surface division had a rough start, with the sale of Surface Pro 3 the division is finally making immense progress. I will push the Surface division to grow for the next few years without cannibalizing the PC sales of OEM partners. Additionally the Nokia acquisition brought in hardware pundits, who need to be supported even if Microsoft bleeds money. Therefore creation of a flagship phone will help Microsoft demonstrate its capabilities to the smart phone market. Nadella's decision to scrap the high-end flagship, code named 'McLaren', showed Microsoft's disinterest to innovate, causing many fans to leave Windows Phone. This will cause Windows phone to lose market share,making Microsoft irrelevant in mobile. Hence I will reverse the earlier decision and release a high-end phone immediately.
These are the goals I plan to achieve by being Satya Nadella for a day. I believe my actions as the CEO will benefit Microsoft in the long run. Besides the knowledge I will gain over 1 day will help me become an innovative product manager in this post-PC era.
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