Basically if you consider the delta between what you would do if you only had to care about your product and its customers, and what you have to do to align with some broader strategy - sell Windows, drive search eyeballs, get more clicks, etc. -- that's the Strategy Tax. It can be used for good but usually means you end up with Windows Phone hobbled with no Mac client, etc.
Strategy tax is where an individual product is constrained in some way to further the overall goals of the company. For example, Microsoft killed a project to port SQL Server to Linux because the product would help to strengthen Linux as a competitor to Windows.
The term has been used inside Microsoft since the 1990s (and maybe before that time).
It's an interesting but misleading phrase, because it doesn't allow for the fact that a bad strategy does nothing to further the overall goals of the company - where a relaxation of a bad strategy does.
If your strategy is "Protect the crown jewels at all costs" while your competitors have discovered a diamond mine, no one needs to care what cutlery you're supposed to use.
Of course that sounds ludicrous, but the impression I get is that that kind of strategic confusion has been endemic at MS since Gates moved on.
Clever innovations like Skype Translate or even Hololens are not a strategy. Selling lots of good individual solutions still isn't a strategy.
You can't play defence on strategy (Office 2026? Windows Infinity?) You need a kick-ass plan for the 5-10 year future, and I see no evidence that anyone at MS is capable of designing a product plan for consumer markets that don't exist yet, and then wondering how to market them - while Google, FB, Apple and even Amazon are at least thinking about it.
Wouldn't universal store across devices count? I mean it doesn't matter if you sell X amount of phones or Xboxes or Desktops, you just need the # of devices that have access to the store to give someone a reason to develop for it. I don;t see anyone moving in that direction at all....
The phrase does not imply that the strategy is beneficial to the company. Microsoft employees often used the phrase when they thought the strategy is detrimental to an individual product and the company as a whole.
Gates was directly responsible for imposing strategy tax during his time at Microsoft.
