A report from Microsoft's 'Board of the Future'

For all of its unique qualities, the Board of the Future was just one of many initiatives that Microsoft has pursued over the years in its work on Microsoft Office and related products, so the ultimate impact of the students' recommendations isn't easy to assess. But the process clearly had a big impact on many of them.

Many of the members of the two boards (from 2004 and 2005) remain in touch with each other, frequently using Facebook and other social networking tools to stay in contact.

Michael Maturo

"It shaped my life with invaluable friends and acquaintances, first and foremost," says Michael Maturo, now 25, who attended the second Board of the Future event, in 2005, and now works as sales operations director at the UNISON Meetings technology consulting firm, in addition to serving as an elected board member in his hometown of Orangetown, N.Y.

"These are people who are excited to change the world in their own, personal, meaningful way, and they are all across the world," he says. "It was a reminder of just how small the world is: I've visited two of my 'classmates' in foreign countries and have stayed in touch with almost all of them."

Microsoft's Board of the Future "was an eye opener to me," agrees Peter Njeru of Kenya, now a 27-year-old lecturer in the University of Nairobi's Department of Architecture and Building Science and an assistant architect and environmental specialist with a consulting firm. "It was my first time to cross over continents. It was my first time to be to the US. I was mesmerized by the level of technology of the place. I was able to develop skills of seeing things or speculating things even 15 years into the future."

Looking back, he says, the experience "helped me to get focused and surprisingly it is the moment when I emerged the top student in my class all the way to my course completion."

Dan Rasmus, who organized the Board of the Future initiative as Microsoft's director of information work vision, also stays in touch with many of the board members. Now an independent strategy consultant and author, he has been strongly influenced by the Board of the Future experience, which helped to shape his current work in corporate strategy and long-term scenario planning.

Dan Rasmus

What lessons should be taken from the Board of the Future? "The biggest thing for me was that companies like Microsoft need to be continuously learning organizations," he says. "That’s something that needs to be part of their DNA. That means not just listening to people that they normally listen to, but listening to a wide range of voices. That was one of the things that we did with this."

Microsoft doesn't have any plans to revive the Board of the Future initiative, but the development of Office is influenced by a wide range of studies and conversations with customers, said PJ Hough, the Office development chief. In conjunction with the Office 2010 launch today, the company is giving a sneak peek of a new "Envisioning Center" in Redmond that gives a sense for the possible future of workplace technology.

And nowadays there are plenty of "millennials" on the Office team itself, shaping the product's direction. "One of the primary influencing factors is that we continue to hire them at a substantial rate," Hough says, laughing as he observes, "Actually we’re sort of infiltrated a little bit by millennials."

Microsoft should consider reviving the Board of the Future concept, even if it's virtual, using online conferencing, says Diane Spiegel, CEO of The End Result corporate training and leadership development firm.

"This generation is really happy to share their ideas, their thoughts, their perspectives," she says. "I think companies are missing an opportunity to ask this generation to contribute, to collaborate, to communicate and talk about that information. ... They’re just so well-connected. From the time they were born, they had a mouse in their hands."

Special Report: Microsoft and its 'Board of the Future' in 2010
Intro: Imagining the future: Microsoft's international advisory board
Part 1: A social movement for technology in the workplace
Part 2: Making Office more usable: What has worked, and what hasn't
Part 3: The technology they use: Office at work, alternatives at home
Part 4: Long-term impact: What the board meant for its members

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