Burning the Ships: Intellectual Property and the Transformation of Microsoft

This was the challenge facing Microsoft founder and Chairman Bill Gates. But "like Cortez burning his ships at the shores of the New World," Gates decided to embrace the change that was needed. He recruited Marshall Phelps—the legendary "godfather" of intellectual property who had turned IBM’s IP portfolio into a $2 billion-a-year gold mine—out of retirement and into the cauldron of controversy that was Microsoft. Only this time Phelps’ mission was infinitely more challenging than simply making money from IP. It was to help reform Microsoft’s "man the barricades" culture, encourage the company to abandon its fortress mentality around its technology and share it with others for mutual benefit, and use intellectual property not as a weapon of competitive warfare but as a bridge to collaboration with other firms instead.

Here, for the first time (and 500 collaboration deals later), is the inside story of what one analyst has called "the biggest change Microsoft has undergone since it became a multinational company."

In this book, authors Marshall Phelps and David Kline take the reader inside the dramatic struggle within Microsoft to find a new direction. They offer an extraordinary behind-the-scenes view of the high-level deliberations of the company’s senior-most executives, the internal debates and conflicts among executives and rank-and-file employees alike over the company’s new collaborative direction, and the company’s controversial top-secret partnership building efforts with major open source companies and others around the world. Nothing was held back from this book save for information specifically prohibited from disclosure by confidentiality agreements that Microsoft signed with other companies. Indeed, the degree of access to Microsoft’s inner workings granted to the authors—and the honest self-criticism offered by Microsoft leaders and employees alike—was unprecedented in the company’s 34-year history.

There are lessons in this book for executives in every industry—most especially on the role that intellectual property can play in liberating previously untapped value in a company and opening up powerful new business opportunities in today’s era of "open innovation." Here is a powerful inside account of the dawn of a new era at what is arguably the most powerful technology company on earth.

Customer Reviews:

Review #1: Understanding the "new" Microsoft
2009-07-15
If you want to get a view on the why and the how of the new Microsoft, this is definitely a book you should read. It offers a good deal of insight on why Microsoft had to change its strategy from a isolated company to an "open view" company; open to collaborate with competitors like Novell, universities, and many others in order to create value in the new value chain economy.

Review #2: A primer for better business, in any field
2009-06-25
Marshall Phelps has made billions of dollars for his employers and fundamentally changed the outlook of some very hard-faced businesses along the way. Burning The Ships describes how Phelps took the lessons he learned making a fortune for IBM and repeated the trick for Bill Gates at Microsoft.

Readers of this book get a no-holds barred perspective of Marshall's magic - and an intriguing insight into the inner workings of the Redmond giant.

Anecdotes from within the fortress walls are always interesting but the big payoff from BurningThe Ships is a real learning opportunity for those people and organizations who want to share in the largely untapped value of their intellectual property assets. This book is a primer for better business, in any field not just technology.

According to Phelps and Kline, Forbes estimates the opportunity value of unrealised intellectual property at a trillion dollars, per annum; unrealised because many businesses have yet to work out how to really exploit their knowledge assets. Who wouldn't want a piece of that action?

The universal business principles described in Burning The Ships are all about relationship building, collaboration and maturity; values that have not always been associated with Microsoft, historically a predatory corporation par excellence. There are some who will never be convinced that the leopard can change its spots but the evidence is there. Over the past few years Microsoft has built invaluable bridges by collaborating with a large number of competitors, well beyond their traditional value chain partners; a difficult journey, no doubt, but worthwhile.

Not least of the difficulties described by the authors is the challenge of relaxing long-held personal and corporate beliefs.

Most of us guard our secrets carefully and worry about losing real value if we open the kimono and let others see what we have been hiding. Agreeing to share intellectual property, either on a commercial or non-commercial basis, is total anathema to many businesspeople. It's also a legal minefield that needs extremely careful navigation.

But attitudes are changing and I genuinely believe that an increasingly joined-up world requires effective joined-up management thinking, which naturally embraces collaborative development for mutual benefit.

Burning The Ships will show you not only how to lighten the load of your own baggage, by radically rethinking your historical approach to Intellectual Property but also how to build valuable new business relationships through collaboration.

So this book is worth its weight in gold, which is highly appropriate because the quest for gold in the New World drove Conquistador Hernando Cortez to burn his expedition's ships, thereby symbolically and practically demonstrating that there would be no going back. Marshall Phelps persuaded IBM and Microsoft to follow the example of Cortez, with tremendous returns. His experiences and David Kline's writing expertise combine to smooth your path to a better business future. Highly recommended.

Review #3: Burning the Ships
2009-06-15
A useful insight into the role of IP in harnesing business value for organisations. A must read for anyone interested in IP.

Review #4: Disappointing
2009-06-15
This should have been a great book, it has all the basic ingredients - an interesting topic that anyone leading a modern business needs to be aware of; written by one of the very few acknowledged superstars in the field; and promising a rare insight into the inner machinations of one of the world most successfull companies as it copes with a fundamental cultural shift.
There are occasional flashes of what this book could have been, genuinely interesting snippets of how the shift in culture and its repercussions changed how business is done at Microsoft.
However, the interesting parts could have been distilled down to about 10 pages; the remainder of the book reads like a testamonial to how wonderful Marshall Phelps is, written by his number one fan - Marshall Phelps. There's far too much discussion of his past achievements, which while impressive, aren't relevant to the topic. There are numerous references to various brilliant members of Phelps' team at Microsoft, but even this seems couched in self congratulations as to how inspired Phelps was in choosing them to be on his team. What there isn't enough of is genuine sense of the drama and importance of the discussions - who's cloak and dagger nature together with the multinational mega-corporation dimension, might not have been out of place in a Tom Clancy novel.

If you're looking for some self congratulatory drivel, then Burning the Ships is worth a read, otherwise I wouldn't bother.

Review #5: A must read for professionals at every level
2009-05-12
Phelps & Kline take the complexity of Intellectual Property and Business Strategy and created a really enjoyable and informative book. They shares interesting insight into the workings at Microsoft and their creative approach to solving a complex business challenge. I really enjoyed the writing style as it was an easy and quick read, yet still very enlightening. I especially enjoyed the story about the title of the book and the reference to Cortez.

Every company creates intellectual property and this book is a must read for professionals at every level. Highly recommended!