Is it time for Steve Ballmer to bail? I don’t pick on Steve for the fun of it — not entirely at least.  I bring up the dreaded discussion of putting a new captain at the helm because after a decade with Ballmer as skipper, the good ship Microsoft is foundering, leaking between nearly every plank.  In an era where everything changed, Microsoft did not change fast enough and has failed to catch the rising tides. Apple has not capitalized on everything and yet Apple now has a market cap larger than Microsoft (which we can take with a few drops of sea water since Apple’s forward P/E ratio is more than 50% higher than Microsoft’s, showing that navigators see better odds with Jobs on the investment horizon). Drucker wisely noted that “Business has only two basic functions – marketing and innovation.”  High tech is uniquely a product of both.  … Continue reading →