Microsoft, Playboy Magazine and Harley Davidson are still pretty strong brands with lot's of fans. BUT...

They all stand still.

Microsoft never really caught up with the Internet, running behind with everything the Internet had offered and toady it's just a 35 year old desktop software company. After the failure with Internet: SaaS. Microsoft failed to open up, becoming part of the SaaS evolution. They called it "Software + Service" which in itself was proof that they didn't even understand what SaaS really was. Then social media - there is nothing MS has to offer. Now cloud computing. MS is investing hundreds of millions in infrastructure nobody is using. Mobile computing, e-learning, SaaS, Social Technology, nothing the old company has even a tiny bit of authority or reputation.

ETRE 1996 was when I met Bill Gates last time in person. He talked about IBM and why Microsoft will never be like IBM. Back than IBM was a behemoth company and MS still an agile growth company. But he was right - IBM is reinventing itself over and over Microsoft never did. More sad though, if you analyze the key products of Microsoft - not a single one was really a Microsoft innovation. DOS wasn't, Windows wasn't, the spreadsheet wasn't, the database wasn't, not even Word was a Microsoft innovation. All Microsoft did was buying some cool technology cheap. But cool stuff ain't be cheap any longer and so MS is not buying any longer. All that's left as an old microcomputer software company. The last refuge MS had was it's massive global channel. But also that is deteriorating. From about 860,000 resellers in 2000 down to 640,000 in 2010. Where did the 220,000 resellers go? To a competitor? No - most ceased operation because they were no longer able to compete with the new technology.

Harley Davidson is still a cool motor bike for the baby boom generation - but the customers are literally dying out. Playboy's Hugh Hefner tries to buy back the magazine so it can't be sold to Penthouse - but it would probably just die with Hefner one day. Microsoft seems having the same destiny. All were great companies - yet only a microscopic number of great companies survive.

Is there a way to get either company back on track? They need to learn how DNA reproduction works. If one allele overrides the instructions from another, it is called the dominant allele, and the allele that is overridden is called the recessive allele. In the case of a daughter with both green and brown alleles, brown is dominant and she ends up with brown eyes.  Although the green color allele is still there in this brown-eyed girl, it doesn't show.

There may still be entrepreneurial spirit in any of the companies - but it doesn't show any longer. They would need other dominant alleles to get the entrepreneurial spirit to work - IBM seemed to have found that formula.