Saturday, December 09, 2006

Steve Balmer at the Harvard business school

Microsoft CEO,Steve Balmer spoke at HBS recently.He is an HBS undergrad and a Stanford
MBA dropout. The following are the highlights of his highly energetic and engaging presentation.

1.Microsoft's multi core strategy , the four cores being
A.Personal productivity software
B.Enterprise productivity software
C.Online world
D.Entertainment world

2.To be a successful leader in the hi tec world you need
A.Broad curiosity
B.Knowledge of technology and business
C.Empathy

3.Target costing for developing countries based on Mukesh Ambani's principle.
Mukesh happens to be his classmate at Stanford and also a dropout.
A.Figure out the selling price based on the market's willingness to pay.
B.Subtract from A the profit margins.
C.Arrive at target cost.
D.Ask your team to come up with products and services honoring the target cost.

4.Market segmentation for developing countries.
A.Top echelons of the society - Serve them the products that you would sell to all rich people in the world.The needs of the rich are the same globally.
B.Middle class - Localize the products.Give teams in developing countries the autonomy to
define and develop such products and features.
C.Lower class - Pay for use model. Similar to Unilever's pay for a drop model for shampoos. The idea here is to pay for each drop of information.

mailto:5.Hissteveb@microsoft.com

6.Microsoft's strategy is to not let anybody ride free. He admits zoon is not making money but is competing nevertheless with ipod.