IEEE survey: Microsoft is software industry's leading innovator

I was reading through IEEE's recent patent portfolio survey and was surprised to see that Microsoft was ranked No. 1 in terms of the overall quality, and more importantly, scientific value of its patent portfolio. The company that gave us Clippy is also sitting on a small mountain of innovation.

The question, of course, is how to turn raw innovation into saleable products. In this area Microsoft may be too dependent on last decade's products to truly focus on the next decade. Yes, Microsoft has churned out the Zune, Xbox, and other new products. But I suspect its dominance in operating systems and office productivity suites keeps it from truly pushing the envelope with new products, because everything has to fit within yesterday's conception of how computing should work.

In short, could Microsoft be its own worst enemy?

Here are the rankings:

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