Microsoft's top healthcare exec says one of CEO Satya Nadella's biggest innovations was to 'violate the horizontal nature of Microsoft' and go after more specific customers
- One of the biggest changes Satya Nadella has made at Microsoft is shifting the company from a focus on making general-purpose products to ones that can be tuned for specific industries, says Dr. Peter Lee, head of Microsoft Healthcare.
- The idea is to focus on deepening its expertise in the industries to which it wants to sell - like healthcare, Dr. Lee's particular patch.
- The focus is apparent in Microsoft's recent hires from industries like healthcare, energy and financial services.
- Microsoft's industry focus is part of Nadella's vision of "tech intensity," a sales pitch to encourage all kinds of companies to adopts its products.
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Microsoft executive Peter Lee has worked under two Microsoft CEOs in his near-decade at the company - and the biggest difference between current chief Satya Nadella and his predecessor Steve Ballmer is the way he thinks about Microsoft as a company.
"He's thought really differently about Microsoft's business," Lee, corporate vice president of Microsoft Healthcare, said of Nadella. "He's caused Microsoft to address vertical markets with more depth and expertise, pushed all of us to really focus on the future of the cloud, and [made] dozens of those profound changes that have put Microsoft in a position of being part of defining the future of digital."
One of the biggest changes Nadella has been driving within Microsoft, Lee said, is changing the company from a "horizontal" one that produces products for general purposes to one with a focus on verticals - in other words, finding ways to tune products for specific problems and situations in industries such as retail, manufacturing, automotive and healthcare.
That's a big departure from the way Microsoft has done things in the past, Lee said.
"Microsoft traditionally is a horizontal platform company," Lee said. "When Satya became our CEO, he thought the future of transformation and evolution in tech intensity and thought [the company] would need to get deeper, violate the horizontal nature of Microsoft and get a little more vertical, and thinking about how Microsoft evolves to go deep."
Microsoft's newfound focus on going deep is part of Nadella's vision of "tech intensity," which is basically the company's sales pitch to encourage customers in all industries to adopt its latest technology platforms and tools and then train their workforce to be able to create their own uses for advanced technologies like artificial intelligence.
Lee's own position is an example of Microsoft's new industry focus. Lee worked broader technology problems as a key leader in its Microsoft Research division, before Nadella asked him to take over the company's emerging healthcare business - a request Lee said "perplexed him at first."
Now, Lee's runs the organization responsible for finding new uses for technologies like artificial intelligence and cloud computing for Microsoft's health care customers and partners.
Microsoft's new focus on verticals is also apparent in several significant hires the company has made in the past year.
Emma Walmsley - CEO of drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline and the most powerful woman in Big Pharma - recently joined the company's board. Microsoft also hired former Samsung executive David Rhew in August as its chief medical officer and vice president of healthcare, and brought Greg Moore over from his former post at Google Cloud to become the company's corporate vice president of health technology and alliances.
Microsoft also hired executives from other industries, including Darryl Willis, Google Cloud's former vice president of oil, gas, and energy and former BP president and general manager, to oversee Microsoft's strategy for energy company customers, and Bill Borden, a former managing director at Bank of American Merrill Lynch, as the company's new corporate vice president of financial services.
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