Microsoft’s Copilot Woes Are a Familiar Problem (Premium)

With Steve Jobs on medical leave in early 2009, a Barclays analyst asked Apple executives during a quarterly earnings call what would happen to the company if Jobs was unable to return. Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer dismissed the question by noting that Jobs was still the CEO and that Tim Cook, then Apple's COO, was responsible for day-to-day operations. But Cook stepped in and provided more information.

"The values of our company are extremely well entrenched," he said. "We believe that we are on the face of the earth to make great products, and that's not changing. We are constantly focusing on innovating. We believe in the simple not the complex. We believe that we need to own and control the primary technologies behind the products that we make, and participate only in markets where we can make a significant contribution."

There was more--Cook also highlighted saying no and focusing, the deep collaboration between Apple's product groups, not settling on anything less than excellence, having the self-honesty to admit when they're wrong, and having the courage to change--but this overt and specific description of his leadership style was shocking to Steve Jobs, who believed only he was qualified to run Apple, and it became known as the "Cook doctrine" among those who follow the company.

Whether Apple under Tim Cook has met the tenets of this doctrine are debatable, but one of his points is relevant to this discussion. Cook's desire that Apple "own and control the primary technologies" behind its products can be seen in Apple's maniacal pushes to eliminate third parties like Qualcomm and Intel from the supply chain, and it may help explain the problems the company has had creating conversational Siri: Apple is so intent on going it alone that it never seemed to internalize the reality that it may never catch up with fast-moving AI pioneers like OpenAI and Google.

The issue for Apple in this instance is that a strategy that always worked well for it in the past suddenly and unexpectedly came up short. And it just doesn't know how to respond to that. When something keeps working, you stop considering alternatives. Everyone is familiar with the notion that insanity can be defined as doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results. But sometimes you do the same thing, and you do get different results. It's no wonder this is confusing.

This problem isn't unique to Apple in any way. Indeed, it's human nature. But when a company becomes dominant in certain markets, it creates a blind spot for itself that may one day undermine that success. Witness Intel, a chip designer and manufacturer that can no longer design or build competitive chips.

Or witness Microsoft, a company that saw so much success with Windows that it mimicked that strategy in other markets with diminishing results over time.

Microsoft's current successes can be tied to leadership that saw this problem, instituted change, and made the right bets...