Burning the Ships: Intellectual Property and the Transformation of Microsoft

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.

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 pa

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!

The sphere of influence of IP has exploded into the mass consciousness in recent years in large measure because of our growing dependence on computers, software applications and the internet to manage, inform and enrich our lives. Our own country's history is inseparable from the influence of our inventors and the laws that uniquely stimulated inventions of all kinds. It behooves us to have at least a passing understanding of the complex issues involving IP in this increasingly global 21st century. Burning the Ships is the well-written corporate memoir of Marshall Phelps, who played a critical role at both IBM and Microsoft in reorienting both companies' approaches to their own IP. The book is amply enriched by the insights of his co-author, David Kline, whose own expertise in IP includes co-authorship of the best-selling Rembrandts in the Attic. Although my own professional life has involved IP issues for almost thirty years, I highly recommend Burning the Ships to all readers, both new to the field and seasoned, who recognize how entwined their professional and personal lives are with the computer, software and the Internet, and, inseparably, their underlying IP.

A great look into how real people inside a big company like Microsoft struggled to change the company 's direction -- and used intellectual property to do it.