Bestseller by Forbes and Financial Times
2026 SERICEO Business Book Club Selections

Microsoft, a representative tech company,
How can we achieve sustainable innovation?

The 'Magnificent 7' is a term referring to the seven giant technology companies that dominate the U.S. stock market: Apple, Microsoft, Google Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Tesla, and Nvidia.
The company with the longest history among them is Microsoft, founded in 1975 and celebrating its 50th anniversary this year.
Microsoft has been a company that has changed the lives of people around the world and embraced their daily lives since the 1980s.
A select few elite groups have brought computers, previously used only for professional work, into every home and on every desk as 'PCs (Personal Computers),' and more recently, they have entered the game console business, dominating everything from work to dopamine-fueled gaming after work.
Microsoft has become an inseparable company from our daily lives.
In this book, "The Secrets of Microsoft Innovation," authors Dean Carrignan and Joan Garvin, as Microsoft insiders, delve into the company's secrets, demonstrating that consistent innovation is sustainable amidst rapidly changing technology trends.

A team of passionate gamers creates a product that attracts other passionate gamers.
New talent continued to improve the product, which attracted more talent to the team.
Their shared love of gaming unites the team and fuels industry-leading innovation.

--- p.46, from "XBOX"

Hypotheses are the subject of verification.
Verification can prove whether a hypothesis is true or false.
Either way, we learn something.
If the entire organization uses the word "hypothesis" rather than "idea," it can reduce the risk that members feel when sharing their thoughts.
If your claim is not an absolute truth but a theory, you can accept questions or doubts raised by others as help for verification and improvement, not as attacks.
This allows people to share hypotheses faster and more frequently, and gives teams the opportunity to collaborate and learn more frequently.

--- p.84, from "Visual Studio Code"

From another perspective, over-service can be explained by 'over-engineering and poor design'.
This kind of thing happens all too often.
We've all experienced, at one point or another, a product, service, or process that had features that far exceeded what the user needed, wanted, or could properly use.
Even newly released products often fall into this dilemma.
In fact, one of the reasons startups fail is because they exhaust their resources by building too many things too early, before they even find market fit.
--- p.93, from “Microsoft Office”

Missing out on the mobile revolution was a huge blow to Microsoft.
This incident served as an opportunity for the entire company to reaffirm its commitment to innovation and staying ahead of future changes.
Since Satya Nadella took over as CEO in 2014, he has focused on transforming the company from a "know-it-all" culture to a "learn-it-all" culture.

--- p.146, from “Microsoft Research”

The shift to deep learning has significantly helped Bing close the gap with Google in terms of search quality.
Google's transition to deep learning has been relatively slow because it has invested heavily in existing machine learning technologies and human resources.
Five years after pivoting to deep learning, Bing's internal analysis shows that it is now on par with Google on most key search quality metrics.
This shift paves the way for Bing to take a leading role in deploying powerful deep learning models, such as the GPT family, through a strategic partnership with Microsoft and OpenAI.
--- p.171, from "Ice"

The innovation process is often depicted as linear for simplicity, but in reality it is always circular.
Although it is expressed as going back to the previous step, the process itself always moves forward.
The more we repeat the process of divergence-convergence-synthesis, the more we learn.
There is no going back to before.

--- p.230, from "Pattern 1: Daily Innovation"

Enterprise-wide innovation inherently goes beyond "routine" tasks and requires investments of time, talent, and resources that transcend the boundaries of organizational charts and financial statements.
For this, support from the CEO and key executives is essential.
While such innovations can certainly begin at the grassroots level, long-term success requires the continued support and engagement of senior management.
Management has the privilege of strategic patience.
It is an essential part of realizing transformative values.

--- p.301, from “Conclusion”