Microsoft's Cloud-First Shift, Traced to Public Evidence

Strategy and digital-transformation advisory for leadership teams: https://strategyascode.org/?utm_sourc... You've probably sat through a big strategy announcement and had no way to check any of it. So I picked one: in February 2014 Microsoft's new CEO wrote to staff that the job was to thrive in "a mobile and cloud-first world". Can three of the moves that followed be traced to dated, public evidence? That's what this video does. Three stops from the Business Strategy as Code (BSaC_) method, run on public sources only: a scan of the outside world (PESTEL), a map of what Microsoft cut and what it added (the ERRC grid), and strategic pillars, checked for the numbers attached to them. CHAPTERS 0:00 Intro 0:27 Set-up: 4 February 2014 0:42 The method and today's question 1:04 The route: three stops 1:24 Stop 1: PESTEL 2:52 Stop 2: ERRC grid 4:24 Stop 2: the mapping 5:22 Stop 2: the strategy canvas 6:06 Stop 2: the Nokia figures 7:05 Stop 3: Strategic pillars 8:16 Stop 3: pillars and my links 9:07 Stop 3: the dated targets 10:22 My reading 11:14 The whole trace 12:24 Does this apply to you? 12:52 Take-home 13:03 Outro DOES THIS APPLY TO YOU? Fits: a big, hard-to-reverse call that a board, investor or regulator will want to check. Doesn't fit: crisis-speed or routine reversible calls, or a question you can't get evidence on from more than one source. Cost: time, and someone practiced at coding evidence. Before you start: a named owner, a scoped question, evidence from more than one source, and real time. SOURCES (all public; dates are the documents' own) 1. Satya Nadella, email to employees on first day as CEO, Microsoft Source, 4 Feb 2014 — https://news.microsoft.com/source/201... 2. "Introducing Microsoft's new CEO: Satya Nadella", Official Microsoft Blog, 4 Feb 2014 — https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2014... 3. "Office Mobile for iPhone", Microsoft Office blog, 14 Jun 2013 — https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/micro... 4. Microsoft Q&A, "Office Mobile on Android 4.0.3" (Microsoft staff answer), 2 Oct 2013 — https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/ans... 5. "Microsoft to acquire Nokia's devices & services business...", Microsoft Source, 3 Sep 2013 — https://news.microsoft.com/source/201... 6. "Announcing the Office you love, now on the iPad", Microsoft Office blog, 27 Mar 2014 — https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/micro... 7. "Microsoft announces restructuring of phone hardware business" (incl. Nadella's email to employees), Microsoft Source, 8 Jul 2015 — https://news.microsoft.com/source/201... 8. Microsoft Q4 FY2015 earnings release (Form 8-K, Ex. 99.1), SEC EDGAR, 21 Jul 2015 — https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/da... 9. Satya Nadella, Financial Analyst Briefing 2015, Microsoft Investor Relations, 29 Apr 2015 (Microsoft's page is gone; archived copy) — https://web.archive.org/web/202002232... 10. Microsoft Form 10-K for fiscal year 2016, SEC EDGAR, 2016 — https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/da... 11. "Microsoft Cloud Continues to Grow, Powers First Quarter Results" (FY18 Q1 press release), Microsoft Investor Relations, 26 Oct 2017 — https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Inves... 12. Press-relayed, not a Microsoft-hosted page: "Microsoft: 1 Billion Windows 10 Installs by 2018 Is Unlikely", Redmondmag.com, Jul 2016 (quotes a Microsoft statement that reaching 1 billion devices "will take longer than FY18") — https://redmondmag.com/blogs/the-schw... 13. Method credit: W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne (2005), Blue Ocean Strategy, Harvard Business School Press — ERRC grid and strategy canvas — https://www.blueoceanstrategy.com/too... and https://www.blueoceanstrategy.com/too... LINKS White paper (published, open to review): https://whitepaper.strategyascode.org... Request a call: https://strategyascode.org/?utm_sourc... #MicrosoftStrategy #BusinessStrategy #CaseStudy