Over Christmas Melinda Gates was a guest editor on BBC Radio 4 Today. She was asked if she allowed her children to have iPods. She replied ‘No’ as their lives had been built upon Microsoft’s successImage may be NSFW.
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and she was loyal to that. Today, Sir Howard Stringer (first British CEO to head Sony) was on Desert Island Discs. He was asked the same question but said his kids were too old to stop them but he would not use an iPod himself –again due to loyalty to Sony.
On Friday I wrote a post ( See IT’s all over now) mentioning Gartner – I suspect for the first time. I really don’t know why I should feel ‘disloyal’ mentioning a competitor particularly quoting research where we have no equivalent. Microsoft doesn’t have an iPod equivalent either. Sony too, having invented the personal music player (Oh how I loved my Walkman…), doesn’t really have a viable, current competitor. So it is questionable why we all have this sense of disloyalty.
Do you always use your company products out of loyalty even when you know they are inferior to the market leaders? I know from personal experience that many of you don’t! (No names, no pack drill) Is this good or bad? If you can be more productive using a competitor’s product then why not? Conversely, you could be a major influence in improving your inferior products by using them.
