Headline, June29, 2013

'''THE -IQ- WAR'''

Flying on a Delta Shuttle with Bill Gates some many years ago, a highly respected publisher posed him this question:

''What Microsoft competitor worries you most?''

''Goldman Sachs,'' responded Bill Gates. The publisher gave him a startled look. Was`Microsoft about to try the Investment Banking business??!

''Software,'' explained Bill Gates, ''is an IQ business. Microsoft must win the IQ war, or we won't have a future. I don't worry about Lotus or IBM, because the smartest guys would rather come to work for Microsoft. Our competitors for IQ are Investment Banks such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.''

Bill Gates just can't stop talking about IQ. Getting the brightest bulbs to work at Microsoft has always been his obsession. It's paid off in a manner one can barely comprehend. Take all these companies and do a comparison test: Sales divided by the number of employees?
Along came Google which now beats Microsoft in the IQ war.

One must state the obvious here  -that IQ is a touchy subject. A 1971 U.S.Supreme Court Ruling : Griggs vs Duke Power, discourages the IQ tests in the workplace. Microsoft famously wiggled around the Griggs by subjecting ''job applicants'' to verbal brain teasers. For example if a spider fell to the bottom of a 50-foot well, and each day climbed up 3 feet and slipped back 2, how many days would it take the spider to get out of the well?

Google grabs its share of IQ by nabbing scientists and engineers from Stanford, MIT, and Caltech. Microsoft remains in the 99th percentile of high-IQ companies. I would venture to think that Microsoft has the highest IQ-per employee rate of any company with more than 50,000  -or even 20,000  employees in the world. But Google now tops the software giant. Why? Well, there are many reasons for this:

Microsoft's stock remained stuck in a trading range patterns for over five years. By 2005, gone were the days when you could join Microsoft, work 80 hours a week for five years and get damn rich with stock-options. Google is now the place to get rich. But the argument gets only so far. For example it can't explain why Kai-Fu Lee, a Microsoft executive, -2005-  after the IPO bonanza  -to become the head of its new R&D center in China.

Microsoft quickly sued Google over Lee's departure, claiming Lee had violated a noncompete agreement. A U.S. court let Lee start his job at Google. You or anyone can guess what Lee's motivation to jump ship was. At Google one works ''to change the world''; at Microsoft one works to protect the Windows and Office profit margins.

''Which mission do you think high  -IQ-  people prefer?''

A snippet from 2005 shows Microsoft caught in a classic dilemma. Nearly all its profits then came from two products  -Windows and Office. These must be defended at all costs. One of those costs was backward compatibility. For example, Windows Vista must be able to run the older version of Office. That was and is a Laudable goal, but it carried a huge penalty. Microsoft needed a Russian Army of of close to 10,000 engineers to grind out the  ''50-million plus''  lines of code. The complexity of the Vista Project had created its own management challenges.

Since then, since ever, Microsoft has battled and shaken up its top ranks to become faster and leaner. That may or may not work. For Microsoft, -or for that  matter-  every great company in the world,  the longer term and real survival challenge is the one that keeps Bill Gates up at night: ''The IQ War'':

The best and the brightest are not satisfied to defend legacy. They want to change the world.

Almost Every University in the world is reading and watching Sam Daily Times; Almost every organisation and corporation in the world is doing just about the same. Be assured, that all will watch you perform at Sam Daily Times and at !WOW!

For sure ''The -IQ- War''  is on. The strength is in joining up on !WOW! , contributing great content and delighting the whole world.

Sam daily times and !WOW! are your sixth sense, without them you will never be able to make real use of the other five. 

See Ya all : On the battlefield.

Respectful dedication to All the Students and All the Professors who didn't contribute. The world needs ''possibilists''  : not just optimists and pessimists.

Good Night & God Bless!

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless