Burning the Ships: Intellectual Property and the Transformation of Microsoft

Marshall Phelps's remarkable eyewitness story offers lessons for any executive struggling with today's innovation and intellectual property challenges. Burning the Ships offers Phelps's dramatic behind-the-scenes account of how he overcame internal resistance and got Microsoft to open up channels of collaboration with other firms.

• Discover the never-before-told details of Microsoft's secret two-year negotiations with Red Hat and Novell that led to the world's first intellectual property peace treaty and technical collaboration with the open source community
• Witness the sometimes-nervous support Bill Gates and CEO Steve Ballmer gave to Phelps in turning their company around 180 degrees from market bully to collaborative industry partner
• Offers an extraordinary behind-the-scenes view of the high-level deliberations of the company's senior-most executives, the internal debates and conflicts among executives and rank-and-file employees alike over the company's new collaborative direction

There are lessons in this book for executives in every industry-most especially on the role that intellectual property can play in liberating previously untapped value in a company and opening up powerful new business opportunities in today's era of "open innovation." Here is a powerful inside account of the dawn of a new era at what is arguably the most powerful technology company on earth.