A report from Microsoft's 'Board of the Future'

Asked to reflect on the past six years, some of the board members say they believe Microsoft has been moving in the right direction — but in many cases not quickly enough to keep them from embracing rival services and alternative technologies.

“I think Microsoft got some interesting insight from us but missed a key opportunity,” says board member Ainsley Gilkes of Australia, now 28 and working as a sourcing and talent manager for steel manufacturing and distribution company OneSteel Ltd.

Ainsley Gilkes

“In 2004, they had flown in this group of young people that had essentially been selected through social media; but they asked them to look at the future through the narrow framework of an existing product – Office,” she says. “I can't help but think that if we had just brainstormed from thin air, we might have generated more specific ideas for Office but also for their products more generally.”

Gilkes herself now personifies many of the trends discussed during the Board of the Future sessions.

She is immersed in social media not only in her personal life but in her job, championing the concept of “social recruitment” inside OneSteel through initiatives including the OneSteelGrads Twitter account, which can be used to update job candidates on where they stand in the recruitment and selection process. A regular user of Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, she uses Office at work but is one of several members of Microsoft’s Board of the Future who say they prefer Google Docs and its web-based approach.

Microsoft Office is aiming to address both of those issues with the new 2010 release.

One new feature of Office 2010, dubbed the “Outlook Social Connector,” will let people read and respond to messages from such services as Facebook and LinkedIn from a pane within the Microsoft email program. And the company is launching Office Web Apps, its answer to Google Docs, providing free, browser-based versions of Office programs such as Word and Excel through the Windows Live online service for consumers and SharePoint server software for businesses.

[Related Content: Microsoft remakes Office for Facebook generation]

Those changes of are part of a shift in focus toward people and collaboration in the Office programs, reflecting the broader changes in society and technology, said PJ Hough, who heads up Office development as the corporate vice president of program management.

Hough acknowledges the value of brainstorming from thin air, and points to a newer Office product, OneNote, as an example of Microsoft thinking outside the framework of its traditional programs. At the same time, he says, Microsoft has an obligation to Office users not to change existing programs so radically that they become unfamiliar or incompatible.

“We’ve done tons of work in the product to maintain that continuity over time,” he says, describing that as an important “contract” between Microsoft and its Office users.

Special Report: Microsoft and its 'Board of the Future' in 2010
Intro: Imagining the future: Microsoft's international advisory board
Part 1: A social movement for technology in the workplace
Part 2: Making Office more usable: What has worked, and what hasn't
Part 3: The technology they use: Office at work, alternatives at home
Part 4: Long-term impact: What the board meant for its members

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