Dick Brass

Nearly a decade ago, the New York Times profiled a Microsoft executive named Dick Brass as an outsider looking to shake things up with the launch of the company's Tablet PC initiative. So how did that turn out? Brass, who left the company in 2004, tells the rest of the story in this NYT op-ed.

"Unlike other companies, Microsoft never developed a true system for innovation," Brass writes. "Some of my former colleagues argue that it actually developed a system to thwart innovation. Despite having one of the largest and best corporate laboratories in the world, and the luxury of not one but three chief technology officers, the company routinely manages to frustrate the efforts of its visionary thinkers."

The piece is nuanced in a way that no excerpt can do justice, and it's worth reading in its entirety.

For me, the piece completes a story. When Brass left the company six years ago, after moving on to lead the company's automotive technology business, I heard about his departure and left him a message in hopes of confirming the news and writing about it. He politely declined. Now, with Apple forging ahead with a tablet-style device of its own, it looks like Brass decided it was time to speak out.

"Microsoft’s huge profits — $6.7 billion for the past quarter — come almost entirely from Windows and Office programs first developed decades ago," he writes. "Like G.M. with its trucks and S.U.V.’s, Microsoft can’t count on these venerable products to sustain it forever. Perhaps worst of all, Microsoft is no longer considered the cool or cutting-edge place to work. There has been a steady exit of its best and brightest."

Of course, as you read the piece, keep in mind that Brass hasn't been around Microsoft for a while. Like the piece by Don Dodge that we highlighted earlier in the week, his op-ed is earning some quibbles from people currently working inside the company. But it's already catching the attention of the broader tech industry, and you can bet it will be read closely by many people in Redmond.

Update: Frank Shaw, Microsoft's vice president of corporate communications, offers his take on Brass' op/ed in this post on the company's official blog.

"At the highest level, we think about innovation in relation to its ability to have a positive impact in the world," Shaw writes. "For Microsoft, it is not sufficient to simply have a good idea, or a great idea, or even a cool idea. We measure our work by its broad impact."

He continues, "To make his point, Dick generally focused on ClearType, noting that this technology was 'stifled' by existing business groups. For the record, ClearType now ships with every copy of Windows we make, and is installed on around a billion PCs around the world. This is a great example of innovation with impact: innovation at scale."

The full post is worth a read.