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Is Office really the best it can be?
How much innovation do we really see in the sector of word processing and spreadsheets? Even Powerpoint doesn’t seem to be leading in presentation innovation. Let me just point out that this is in no way a criticism of Microsoft. For Office to dominate in the way that it does shows just how brilliant it is for work purposes, but is it the best it can be?
The file system of Windows. The basic word editing we do every day. The mundane Excel sheets will fill in with formulas on a daily basis. The often dated slides that we produce with Powerpoint. It doesn’t exactly look like innovation from my point of view. Everyone uses Office because of the shear numbers of people that have Office. It’s that simple. It’s going to be hard for anyone else to create an industry standard in this field, but it could be different.
I’m constantly searching for new ways to look at work, how I’m planning things, new time management software (not just because playing around with something new is fun), but because I truly believe planning on Excel documents and presenting in Powerpoint can’t be the best way forward.
There are some great examples in the Chrome Web Store right now along with the obvious and highly popular note taking services - Evernote and SpringPad, there is also Prezi for presentations. The options online are increasing all the time. They might all be a way off becoming industry standard pieces of software, but they are certainly innovating in a sector that I feel is becoming stale.
People in business have also become too easily attached to products, even if they are old, out of date and in fact decrease productivity. There is the argument that having to learn a whole new set of software is time consuming, which is true, but at the same time a days training over a years time saved is worth it in my eyes.
Office is great, but I like to see what else is out there too…
