Microsoft's Bing team tries to foster startup culture at Redmond

From	RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com>
Newsgroups	comp.misc
Subject	Microsoft's Bing team tries to foster startup culture at Redmond
Date	2014-03-07 11:37 +0000
Organization	solani.org
Message-ID	<lfcb20$7kp$1@solani.org> (permalink)

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From the «Hey Ballmer, agile this!» department:
Title: A shift in Microsoft’s culture: Inside Bing’s new incubation project (exclusive)
Author: Christina Farr
Date: Thu, 06 Mar 2014 16:04:45 -0500
Link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Venturebeat/~3/niEjuoEQeMU/
Podcast Download URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Venturebeat/~5/gk6AroOZI4s/bing.jpg

[image 1]

Above: Bing employees in Bellevue, Wash.
Image Credit: Microsoft

Within Microsoft[2], a global corporation with tens of thousands of
employees, one team is working to foster a startup-like culture.

That group is building Bing[3], a search engine to compete with Google[4]
. Bing is one of Microsoft’s youngest departments, as it was the end result
of a startup acquisition in 2008: Powerset for north of $100 million[5],
coupled with Windows Live Search.

In an interview earlier this week, Bing corporate vice president Derrick
Connell described Microsoft’s search engine as a scrappy “underdog.” Unlike
other Microsoft services and software, which succeed by “locking in”
customers[6], Bing doesn’t have a shot against Google unless it delivers a
superior search experience.

For this reason, Bing is investing in new product development and setting up
innovation programs, more so than any other department at Microsoft. By
phone, Connell exclusively shared his plans for the future, and one new
initiative in particular, provisionally titled the “Bing Incubation Project.”

Bing’s approach to product development

“We had this theory about a year ago, which we called ‘Liberating
Innovation,’” said Connell in our interview. ”Our mission is to get new
products out to the market every day.”

It’s not often that you hear terms like “agile development” and “rapid
product iteration” from a senior Microsoft executive. But Connell speaks the
startup vernacular. At various points in our interview, he referred to Bing
as a “well-funded startup.” Bing (in its previous incarnation as Powerset)
began its life as a tiny startup with a cutting-edge technology.

Over the past few months, Connell has been quietly testing the incubation
project. The idea is that every six weeks (the next session is in two weeks),
any Microsoft employee with an idea can pitch a group of senior executives
and managers. If the idea is a hit, these judges may decide to invest
resources from their own budgets.

“A manager might decide to throw in a few thousand machines or a top designer
or a marketing person,” Connell explained.
[image 8][7]

Above: Bing’s auto-suggest feature

Already, one new product has come out of the first pitch session. Now, if you
search for a famous person, such as former U.S. President Bill Clinton,
you’ll see contextual information pop up in the actual search box. It’s
Bing’s version of auto-suggest, and is one of the more popular features.

The first pitch day was attended by Microsoft employees, but Connell is
considering opening it up to anyone. For now, the new ideas must serve Bing,
but other teams and departments may decide to follow suit. ”We are in a
position to help the rest of the company and export innovative thinkers out
to those teams,” said Connell.

But it may be too little, too late. Suhail Doshi, the twentysomething founder
of mobile and web analytics startup Mixpanel[9], said companies need to make
a profound effort to inspire innovation in their ranks from the early days.

According to Doshi, managers and the executive team should always be
“accessible” — and not just every six weeks. As his company has scaled, Doshi
set aside office hours for any employee (junior or senior) to pitch a new
product. “We have a lot of ways to bubble up ideas,” he said. When it comes
to the bureaucracy trap, he said, “we’re constantly evolving to fight the
problem.”

The future for Bing

Next week, Connell will attend a retreat and present to top Microsoft
executives.

Nadella’s recent appointment may signal a new era for the technology giant,
and a shift in the corporate culture. In 2012, when former chief executive
Steve Ballmer was still in charge, Vanity Fair published a damning report[10]
 highlighting how Microsoft’s bureaucracy-laden culture had stifled new
ideas.

“I feel this new energy at the company, which will be interesting to watch,”
said Connell. Ray Wang, a principal analyst at technology-focused firm
Constellation Research, agrees.

“We’re seeing a transformation at Microsoft in different divisions,” Wang
explained in an email. “There’s a hunger and fire to win again.”

At the retreat, Connell said he will showcase some of the freshest ideas from
Bing and detail how he plans to win market share from Google. Nadella has a
soft spot for Bing, having worked on the team for several years, where he
helped run some of the original Bing hack days.

Despite his soft spot for Bing, Nadella has been described as a “tough,
numbers-driven leader” by analysts like Forrester’s Ted Schadler. Many
technology experts[11] consider Microsoft to be too big to compete with
faster-moving startups. A recent CNET report[12] suggests Nadella may
subscribe to this view and eventually decide to sell off the Bing and Xbox
businesses.

Connell doesn’t appear to have paid heed to these reports. He’s planning to
aggressively expand the Incubation Project to other Microsoft offices
globally. In the next month or so, he’ll organize a 24-hour hack session in
Hyderabad, India, where Microsoft has a sprawling campus.

“People forget that Microsoft has always had a tendency to make big bets,”
said Connell.
[image 13]
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[image 15]
[image 17][16] [image 19][18] [image 21][20] [image 23][22] [image 25][24]
[image 27][26][image 29][28][image 31][30][image 33][32][image 34][image 36][35][image 38][37][image 40][39][image 42][41][image 44][43][image 45]

Links:
[1]: http://venturebeat.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/bing.jpg?w=578&h=9999&crop=0 (image)
[2]: http://microsoft.com (link)
[3]: http://www.bing.com/ (link)
[4]: http://google.com (link)
[5]: http://venturebeat.com/2008/06/26/microsoft-to-buy-semantic-search-engine-powerset-for-100m-plus/ (link)
[6]: http://www.wired.com/insights/2012/05/microsoft-office-lockin/ (link)
[7]: http://venturebeat.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/screen-shot-2014-03-06-at-11-33-20-am.png (link)
[8]: http://venturebeat.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/screen-shot-2014-03-06-at-11-33-20-am.png?w=300&h=148 (image)
[9]: http://mixpanel.com (link)
[10]: http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2012/08/microsoft-lost-mojo-steve-ballmer (link)
[11]: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/09/technology/worries-that-microsoft-is-growing-too-tricky-to-manage.html?pagewanted=all (link)
[12]: a school of thought that suggests Microsoft is simply too big to compete with slicker, faster-moving companies born in the Internet era. (link)
[13]: http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=venturebeat.com&blog=342986&post=1060249&subd=venturebeat&ref=&feed=1 (image)
[14]: http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/1555875/VB-Intel-Marketing-automation-buyers-survey (link)
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Microsoft's Bing team tries to foster startup culture at Redmond RS Wood  <rsw@therandymon.com> - 2014-03-07 11:37 +0000

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