Burning the ships

by Marshall Phelps

At the start of this decade, Microsoft was on the defensive--beset on all sides by anti-trust suits and costly litigation, and viewed by many in the technology industry as a monopolist and market bully. How was it going to survive and succeed in the emerging new era of "open innovation," where collaboration and cooperation between firms, rather than market conquest, would be the keystones of success? This was the challenge facing Microsoft founder and Chairman Bill Gates. But "like Cortez burning his ships at the shores of the New World," Gates decided to embrace the change that was needed. He recruited Marshall Phelps--the legendary "godfather" of intellectual property who had turned IBM's IP portfolio into a $2 billion-a-year gold mine--out of retirement and into the cauldron of controversy that was Microsoft. Only this time Phelps' mission was infinitely more challenging than simply making money from IP. It was to help reform Microsoft's "man the barricades" culture, encourage the c