Business ideology Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Business ideology - Essay Example The centralized, authoritarian technology is portrayed as bad technology that squeezes the human spirit and manipulates people’s minds. Apple personified the Mac as the good technology – independent, individualized -- that can liberate the individual from the bad technology. Microsoft presented a similar ideology with the message by CEO Steve Ballmer (1986) that depicted Microsoft providing people-ready computing. Microsoft claimed that their innovations facilitated the supremacy of people. A comparison with IBM in the form of a direct assault, Microsoft declared that the pitch of IBM is to help companies with its innovations, at Microsoft the tone is to give power to the people to innovate. Microsoft, like Apple, emphasized the ideology of empowerment by making a striking contrast to IBM as the veiled power behind the centralized, spirit-subduing hegemony. In effect, Microsoft was duplicating Apple’s ideology and strategy. But Apple’s approach went deeper than its marketing implication. Apple advanced the integration of its technology as the nucleus of its strength. By keeping up a closed system, uniting proprietary software and hardware, Apple could provide, it asserted, a more enhanced user experience. The message was: You did not have to be bothered about the technology – it simply worked – so that you could focus and be creative on doing your work. Microsoft, which built up its market dominance in PCs on an open structural system, is now embracing the Apple strategy as well. Microsoft claimed that its integrated platform of corporate software provided a better enhanced user experience, from the operating system to the desktop application. Microsoft argued through Jeff Raikes (Business Week, Mar.2006) that Microsoft offered more capabilities by product integration, a blend of technologies having more impact. Again the message was: Liberating people to innovate. Would this integrated ideology work for Microsoft? It may be recalled