MICROSOFT TRANSITION FROM START-UP FIRM TO A MAJOR CORPORATION

How had Microsoft successfully navigated the transition from a start-up firm to a major corporation? The slides below gives the answer for that based on the Harvard Business School Case Prepared by Professor Philip M. Rosenzweig.

In 1973 MITS released  Worlds First Microcomputing Kit Altair 8080 which was built around Intel 8080 with max 4K memory.  It was the start of huge opputunities lay ahead in computer industry. Integrated circuits were growing exponentially in power and were simultaneously dropping in price.Bill Gates and Paul Allen  saw that future computers would be infinitely powerful and would cost nothing.They focused on software  rather than hardware like Apple and started developing  BASIC language for Altair 8080.

In 1980 IBM began to develop its own PC and MS-DOS (Microsoft Disk Operating System) became the most popular operating system running on it and eventually the de facto industry standard by convincing other firms to develop software that can run on MS-DOS

In 1983, after failure with first COO experince, Gates hired Jon Shirley: «untimate businessman», who had a 25 year experince in comp. merchandising with marketing and finance knowledge. Recurietment Policy of the company was to recuriet young talented developers but experienced managers. In 1985, Microsoft introduced Windows, a graphics-based operating environment that ran on MS-DOS and allowed users to run several programs at the same time for easy interaction with computers.By 1988, Microsoft had overtaken major competitors such as Lotus Development Corp., VisiCorp, MicroPro, and Ashton-Tate to become the market leader in PC applications software as well as operating systems software.

Microsoft successfully built a good manegement system including finance, support, corporate business, hiring, training, compensation whichs' details given the slides.

As a result Microsoft became a major company by 1991 with the numbers given below: Revenues surpassed $1.8 billion, up 56% from the previous year, and ten times the level of 1986.Profitability remained exceptionally high, with net income reaching $463 million, 25% of revenues.Bill Gates was one of the wealthiest Americans, owning 30% of Microsoft stock with a market value of $4 billion. Windows 3.0, which enabled applications programs to work together in a user-friendly graphics environment sold over three million copies in its first year. Microsoft’s success was reflected in a stock price, increased by a factor of 20 since the company went public in 1986.