Paul Allen's new book Idea Man came out recently. In it he tells his version of the development of Microsoft and its progress as a company. This past week he was interviewed on 60 Minutes, revealing how one day he overheard a conversation between Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer in which they were discussing how they could go about diluting Pauls share of the company down to almost nothing. This was while he was fighting a battle with stage 4 lymphoma. He walked in on them and they realized he had overheard their conversation so later that evening Steve came to his house to apologize.
You can watch the clip from 60 Minutes here:
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7363070n&tag=topnews
In his book Paul Allen reveals that Microsofts strategy was to closely watch the competition, quickly seize their ideas and run with them, making them seem to be their own. This isn't exactly surprising news since that seems to be the strategy that Microsoft was built on, scavenging ideas from any possible competitors and putting them out as fast as possible. It worked with windows and the mouse so why not keep doing it?
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