Innovations of Systems | A Case Study of Microsoft

Company Profile | Microsoft?

• Founded: 1975 (Microsoft Team, “About Microsoft”)
• Founders: Bill Gates and Paul Allen (Microsoft Team, “About Microsoft,” para. 1)
• Revenue: Approximately $211 billion in the 2023 Fiscal Year (Nadella, 2023, para. 11)
• Number of Employees: Approximately 221,000 (Vailshery, 2023, para. 1)

Application of the Design Thinking Process | Microsoft

Innovative Research

Microsoft was first developed as a startup software development company in 1975. It was created during a revolutionary digital age, making them an early competitor in the marketplace. By 1980, Microsoft’s founders signed a deal with IBM to create and provide the operating system for the first personal computer (Microsoft Team, “About Microsoft,” para. 2). In 1985, Microsoft Windows was released and by the late 1980s, they were “the world’s largest personal-computer software company” (Microsoft Team, “About Microsoft,” para. 2). Since then, Microsoft has not slowed down in their innovative approach to systems designs. They have created countless products to make themselves a fierce competitor in the marketplace. Innovations like the Microsoft Office suite, Microsoft 365, and the Xbox have allowed them to seep into multiple facets of the market and broaden their consumer base. These innovations, however, are only impactful based on their walk through the design thinking process.

Their motivation behind systems innovative research is “Systems Innovation is a joint collaboration between Microsoft 365, MSR and Azure focused on leveraging our deep workload understanding and combining algorithmic research with AI/ML techniques and hardware innovation to provide a step function improvement in operational efficiency and reliability enabling us to deliver best in class productivity experiences while meeting our sustainability goals” (Microsoft Team, “The motivation behind Systems Innovation research,” para. 1). They promote a collaborative approach–between Microsoft 365, MSR and Azure–in order to accomplish their three key pillars of innovation: hardware, algorithms and AI/ML techniques (Microsoft Team, “The motivation behind Systems Innovation research,” para. 1).

Empathy and Define

First, Microsoft approaches their innovations with an empathetic foundation. In the world of technology, it is easy to get caught up in the technological jargon and create technology-centered designs. Therefore, Microsoft’s first empathetic hurdle is to create user-centric designs that can include a less technologically-advanced consumer target (Gurung, 2022, para. 2). In order to create a truly empathetic solution, they must define who they are designing for and define what the main issues are. They do this through strategic efforts of identifying key stakeholders, identifying key usage patterns, and documenting the stakeholders’ emotional and functional needs (Woods, 2020, para. 6).?

Ideate, Prototype, and Testing

They then enter into the ideation phase, which is done in a multi-disciplinary collaborative team. Microsoft has found that “the best results come when it is an inclusive exercise by all disciplines with the combination of giving folks focused individual deep-thinking exploration to coming together and brainstorming and building on each other’s ideas” (Woods, 2020, para. 7). From there, they identify recurring concepts or patterns and utilize them to create prototypes for potential solutions. They thematically group the prototypes and create a rapid prototype in order to generate user feedback to direct their testing and refining phases (Woods, 2020, para. 7). They use testing for learning and not to validate their individual ideas (Woods, 2020, para. 7). Ultimately, they “iteratively develop the concepts with user feedback and end up with an alpha prototype after several iterations[, which …] goes through visual designs and aesthetic exploration to spark emotional connection” with the users (Woods, 2020, para. 7).

Implementation

Finally, they reach the implementation stage where the Microsoft team “build the actual release candidate, documentation, marketing site and partner & field strategy” (Woods, 2020, para. 8). After the idea or process has been implemented, the team keeps a careful eye on how well it does in the marketplace. Sometimes, innovations flop and therefore require software updates or pulling the plug. Sometimes the ideas did not have a strong enough emotional connection for the users. The key for Microsoft innovations is that they do not wash their hands of the products once it is implemented, but rather, it is only the beginning of creating the top-of-the-line system developments.

References

Gurung, P. (2022, February 21). How Microsoft reshaped products by embracing design thinking. MyGreatLearning. https://www.mygreatlearning.com/blog/how-microsoft-reshaped-products-by-embracing-design-thinking/

Microsoft Team. (n.d.). About Microsoft: Explore a timeline of Microsoft’s journey. Microsoft. https://news.microsoft.com/about/

Microsoft Team. (n.d.). The motivation behind Systems Innovation research. Microsoft. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/group/systems-innovation/#:~:text=Systems%20Innovation%20is%20a%20joint,reliability%20enabling%20us%20to%20deliver

Nadella, S. (2023). Annual report 2023. Microsoft. https://www.microsoft.com/investor/reports/ar23/index.html

Vailshery, L. (2023, December 5). Number of employees at the Microsoft Corporation from 2005 to 2023. Statista. https://www.statista.com/statistics/273475/number-of-employees-at-the-microsoft-corporation-since-2005/

Woods, A. (2020, December 15). Microsoft: Creative innovation through systematic design thinking to solve human problems. CPO Strategy. https://cpostrategy.media/blog/executiveinsights/microsoft-creative-innovation-through-systematic-design-thinking-to-solve-human-problems/