Will LinkedIn Help Microsoft’s Big Dogs Run?

I worked at Microsoft Canada HQ (in the Microsoft Dynamics business) for a few years in the mid 2000’s. I’ll never forget how pumped and crazy Ballmer used to get about Office and Windows launches. He would ‘preach-scream’ (see videos) about the launches; one of his favorite lines was “the big dogs are running!” It was a euphemism for the onslaught of revenue resulting from new and upgraded Office and Windows licenses.

Everyone at Microsoft knew that Office, Windows and the related Server business drove the bus. Together these products made up (and still make up) 2/3 of Microsoft’s revenue.

So when Microsoft acquired LinkedIn, it got me thinking - will this help the big dogs run?

 If you’ve been following Microsoft, then you know that the big dogs aren’t running as fast as they used to. Revenue growth has stalled, and was a measly 1% last quarter. So how do we get the big dogs running faster again? Simple, make a monster acquisition, add fancy integrations, and magically, LinkedIn users will now spend all their money on Microsoft products and advertising. This simple formula has been used across all 140+ of Microsoft’s acquisitions (since the early 90’s), to grow core revenue leaps and bounds. ;-)

We all know people aren’t going to magically jump to the Microsoft stack because of this acquisition. There are millions of us perfectly happy and hooked on Google Apps, Slack, Zendesk, Joinme, Wave, Wordpress, Asana, Evernote, Facebook, SalesForce, and other non-Microsoft products. But there is a way for Microsoft to entice us, get us “using”, and make this very interesting. Here are a few ideas on how this could happen:

1. Collaboration x.0: Marry the connection capabilities of LinkedIn with the collaboration capabilities of Yammer, Azure, Sharepoint, Office etc. Create a platform that powers internal/external project collaboration, knowledge/intelligence sharing, and influencing. I think we all wish for something that makes connecting, communicating, and working together more seamless and simple.
2. Market Intelligence: Combine the engines of Bing, Azure, CRM, Sway, BI etc. and LinkedIn to power market intelligence. Launch a new service that delivers intelligence and insights on people, prospects, customers, competition; helping sales, marketing, product, and leadership get the intelligence they need to thrive. There are a few companies doing some cool stuff in this space including Jason Smiths Klue (https://klue.com), and Paul Teshima’s Nudge (https://www.neednudge.com/).
3. Narrow & Deep Knowledge Networks: Create the world’s largest specialty knowledge network. Provide an AI back end that finally delivers a stack for Groups on LinkedIn to share, learn, certify and develop in their chosen career (CEO, CFO, COO, VP Product, Sales, Marketing etc.). It would be incredible to link this service into (2), so product teams could scientifically, and predicatively build for markets.
4. Next Gen, Open Talent Management: Mash together Dynamics HRM and LinkedIn to power a shareable next gen talent management platform. Combined with (2) and (3), this platform would identify, manage, develop and drive people performance. And best of all, the records would move with the employee from role to role, company to company, and be granted to managers.

So how would this make the big dogs run? Many executives will (and do) pay for these services. Why? Because they’re all tightly “LinkedIn” to driving higher performing people and products; something we all want that. The acquisition’s big opportunity is take what’s being done today (in the above list), and making things much better, simpler, more seamless and deliver it via a platform with public, critical mass (LinkedIn).

So, let’s all hope that Microsoft and LI make something of this new marriage, and do things that not only help the big dogs run, but help the rest of the pack (you and I) run as well.

Please feel free to share your thoughts on what MS/LI could do to create killer apps we all want/need.