Microsoft's Elop: It's 'Time to Double Down' on R&D

After spending most of his professional career at companies that competed with Microsoft (MSFT Quote), Stephen Elop joined, as he jokingly calls it, the "Evil Empire from the Northwest." That was a little over a year ago. As president of Microsoft's Business Division, Elop oversees the largest revenue-generating division of the company.

He held various positions at Macromedia starting in 1998, rising to CEO after Rob Burgess stepped down in January 2005. In that role, Elop facilitated the acquisition of Macromedia by Adobe Systems (ADBE Quote), completed in December 2005, and joined Adobe as president of worldwide field operations. In January 2007, he left Adobe to become Chief Operating Officer for telecommunications provider Juniper Networks (JNPR Quote). In January 2008, after extensive interviews with Bill Gates and other leaders at the company, Elop joined Microsoft.

Elop recently gave a keynote address at the Wharton Business Technology Conference in Philadelphia, where he unveiled a "concept" video titled, "A Glimpse Ahead," that paints a vision of where Microsoft sees technology headed in the future. The video's futuristic scenarios -- from wall-sized global teleconferencing systems to tiny credit card-sized devices with location-aware data displays -- were designed, in part, to counteract the claim that Microsoft is not an innovative company. The slick user interfaces in the high-tech devices also signal a renewed focus on the user's experience. As Elop told Knowledge@Wharton, "I came from companies where the experience is fundamentally the differentiator," and one of his goals at Microsoft is to "delight" customers with "unparalleled experiences." Microsoft, Elop noted, "does this sometimes; other times it does not."

Even before the current economic crisis, Microsoft's Business Division faced challenges from disruptive business models and a major technological shift from desktop software to web-based applications. In stewarding Microsoft through this transition, Elop needs to protect revenues from the company's traditional software products while not lagging behind in the emerging arena of online, "cloud-based" software accessed over the web. ...