Microsoft’s fiscal calendar runs six months of the calendar year with its FY11 year beginning in July of 2010. The beginning of the fiscal year is always of time of extensive change within the organization. July and August are pre-dominantly planning and budgeting months as new goals and programs are put into place and organizational structures adjusted to meet the executional requirements.
The goals for the innovation team is evolving in its mission as it has each year for the past five years. In previous years we focused on emerging technology adoption for enterprise applications. We’ve gradually been shifting to focus on extensive marketing around these implementations and now this year we are focusing on solutions for consumers. Another key change is the narrowing of breadth or number of opportunities we will drive this year. Instead we are concentrating our resources for larger investments over a smaller set of more significant solutions.
The class of solutions we are targeting are being characterized as “Market Moving.” They are consumer facing and will combine key emerging technology and architectural aspects. Of these we are focusing on: Multi-channel ( mobile, online, desktop, devices), cloud computing services. The solutions must be differentiated in the market place and drive business ROI/ROMI. Joint marketing campaigns will be crafted and executed in the partnerships combining events, traditional, digital and social media marketing.
Already our innovation team is sitting down with major consumer brands do strategy envisioning sessions around next generation solutions. We are exploring the ability to combine brands for a larger reach and consumer value proposition. Joint marketing opportunities are being identified.
The FY11 year should be very interesting to see these major solutions come to market and create new experiences for consumers and channels for new business models to engage with their customers and community.
David Williams
David MS Blog 