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02/08/2010: "SJI In New York Times? Twice. Huh?"

(Dick Brass -TheRead photo)
There it was, right on the Op-Ed page of the New York Times, headlined “Microsoft’s Creative Destruction” by San Juan Island resident Dick Brass.

Mr. Brass is a former vice president at Microsoft, and was part of a team developing a tablet PC before there was a tablet PC, and his comments on how that, and other projects, were managed by Microsoft not only got him a spot on the Time’s Op-Ed page -no easy thing that- but it also generated a story in the Times by Nick Bilton, titled “ Microsoft’s Innovation Versus Dick Brass.

We met Dick Brass years ago when he first moved to San Juan Island, and it was not too long after meeting him that he pulled out this flat screen thing and said this was going to be big, that you read books on it, and write on it. Yeah, okay, we were thinking, so who is going to buy this thing -if and when it becomes available?.

That idea of course has become a big cash cow for more than one company, and Brass made it clear in his Op-Ed piece that Microsoft could have done a better job advancing their product if only they had a corporate climate that required full cooperation between the departments.

Brass puts it this way” Some of my former colleagues argue that it actually developed a system to thwart innovation.” Brass gives a number of examples in his Op-Ed of how “internecine warfare” has hurt project development, and sums up a concern others in the industry (and stock holders) have expressed that “unless it regains its creative spark, it’s an open question whether it has much of a future.”