I cried out loud with joy when I read this. You are so right about Microsoft “forgetting” about the small businesses. But it’s not just Bill Gate’s empire that’s gone that way. Here in the UK we’ve forgotten the edict “Small is Beautiful”. I know it doesn’t always apply, but the way most organisations (including local and national government) behave, you would think it never applied.

I think it’s got a lot to do with too much work being done.

The logic goes something like this:

Everybody has to be rich
SO
Everybody has to work long hours,
SO
Everybody has to do a lot of work,
SO
A lot of work has to be performed and paid for,
SO
In order to pay for all this work you have to charge a lot for your products/services
BUT
Small business owners are in touch with what’s going on and what’s important, so they are very averse to spending money on things they don’t need.
BUT
in big organisations the people in charge are so far away from the “coal face” they can never really know what’s important, they also think you need $250,000 per year to live on,
SO
Big organisations are quite prepared to buy expensive things that have lots of “bells and whistles” but don’t do much that’s important,
SO
To earn a lot of money you have to sell over priced products to big organisations who don’t know any better.
BECAUSE
Everybody has to be rich

I am a Project Manager and have been at the game for 40 years. Last week I attended an exhibition in London where there were a lot of companies (Microsoft amongst them) showing the latest and greatest project management aids going. However, none of them (with the exception of a small company that was selling old fashioned wall mounted planning boards) were showing products designed to help hard pressed Project Managers who work on small projects. They were all after the mega project companies. The fact that project management is about person to person relationships got lost in the clamour to sell their wonderful $1,000 per seat software.

If everybody worked less and only undertook the really important stuff then I’m sure costs would be lower and perhaps the world would be a better place. But Bill Gates wouldn’t be so rich.

That’s my ranting over for the day.

Thanks again for being a breath of common sense.