“Now is the time to build on this momentum and accelerate our share and profits in phones,” Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said in an email to Microsoft employees. “Clearly, greater success with phones will strengthen the overall opportunity for us and our partners to deliver on our strategy to create a family of devices and services for individuals and businesses that empower people around the globe at home, at work and on the go, for the activities they value most.

SOURCE:  Microsoft Buying Nokia’s Devices and Phone Business for $7 Billion – ABC News.

I was around in the beginning of Microsoft. I was a very early implementor of the Office programs. They were a brash company of young hippies who dared to take on the monolithic IBM corporation. They were just too young and naive to know that they couldn’t play on the same field. That’s what makes for the true game-changers in today’s world. The paradigm shifts occur most frequently from these brash startups.

But as is usual success breeds complacency. After you get so big you start worrying about profits and such above innovation. It seems almost impossible to prevent that from happening.  Apple seems to be about the only company that has at least today  that been able to defeat this trend. But, even for them, the writing seems to be on the wall now that Steve Jobs is gone.

Getting to the point of this post, when a company becomes too big to really be a success at innovation they try to buy it instead of creating it.  Microsoft has spurred more billionaires than most any other company. They try to buy small companies and the somehow hope to inherit their zeal. Most often all that happens is the original owner, with his recently acquired billions just moves one to something else. Buying innovative zeal seldom seems to work but it is almost a last-ditch effort for most large corporations. I personally was involved in an attempted merger between two very different work cultures. Within a year it was obvious to everyone that nothing productive would result.

It is a fact that the vast majority of employment in the U.S. comes from the mega-corps. Companies with more than 500 workers employ about three-fourths of the current workforce. So when people say that small business drives America that is just not true when it comes to actual employees but it is generally true with it come to innovation.