What makes Microsoft Microsoft
I went to Microsoft SV office for SQL Saturday earlier today. Most of the sessions there were too technical for me, but I did come home with some new skills and new connections. Great event.
One thing that I did not expect was a tour of the Microsoft Technology Center (MTC), where the company meets internally and with clients to talk about product development. There were a lot of fun toys: a 1000-point multi-touch screen, a 3D printer that is connected to a Kinect camera, a multi-screen game chair, and a room used for showcasing new products (almost like a CNN newsroom).
While these are cool, what really struck me is the design room, which looks like this (I copied image from here):
Yes, it’s a nice room. But the problem is that it looks like a board room, where people sit far apart from each other and talk with Powerpoint presentations. That does not facilitate design. It’s almost too “clean” for design because the environment setting encourages organization, not creative thinking, which is unorganized by nature (studies show that messier environments actually encourage creativity).
Extrapolating a little, I think this is a core problem that Microsoft needs to solve to stay relevant in the future. Allowing and promoting new ideas by letting its engineers/designers go loose with crazier things may not sound like a good approach to enterprise software development, but that’s where chemistry and new ideas come from.