I like to listen and learn from people who provide you with interesting insights and a structured approach to explain how things business is working. What drives the competition? What are the strategic options for a company in a certain industry? How do competitive forces effect the industry profitablity? etc.
A company that is succesful for more then two decades, is the largest software maker in the world – Microsoft. An interesting questions from a strategic perspective is how MS should deal with Open Source Software providers? Incorporate proprietary standards? Provide API’s? etc. How should the long term strategy look like for MS in regards to OSS? Bill Hilf is General Manager of Platform Strategy at Microsoft and got interviewed by channel9. He provides some very interesting insights. He used a model termed “donut model” to explain the corporate strategy approach of the various industry players in the software market. Don’t missed! 🙂