Acquired · Thread
The Microsoft years
Ballmer-era Microsoft is the recurring reference for what happens when a system can see a strategic miss happening and is too large to move on it.
Each of the threads on this site is an arc — a set of episodes that only make sense as installments of the same argument. This page is the in-order index of one of them.
Concepts the thread keeps returning to
Organisational inertia
When a system can see its strategic miss in real time and is too large, too coordinated, or too tenured to move on it.
Platform shifts
Generational transitions — desktop → mobile, on-prem → cloud, CPU → GPU — that reset which incumbents have advantage.
The arc · 3 episodes over 1 year
Ballmer-era Microsoft is the recurring reference for what happens when a system can see a strategic miss happening and is too large to move on it.