I think it's classic "if you ask horse & buggy owners what they want, it's a faster horse" type thinking. People say they want "real windows" on a 10" screen, or at least some group of people say that. But that's not what they want.
I'm pretty much Microsoft's target demographic with Surface: I use Office all day at work, and often need to work on the go because things pop up. I might say I want Windows on a tablet, but that's not really what I want. I want perfect office document compatibility, so I can review markups and changes on the go. I want to be able to log into my company's domain and browse my company's DMS. But that's what I really want, even if I say I want Windows on a tablet. I don't really mean I want full-blown Windows with its mouse-and-keyboard centric UI on a tablet...
The sad thing is that I know that there are brilliant enough people at Microsoft to ask the right questions, to drill down in their focus groups and figure out that the horse & buggy owners could actually really use a buggy, not just a faster horse. As startup people, we try to do this every single time we talk to someone! But somehow the institution doesn't allow those people to ask the right questions and act upon the answers - rather, it seems to encourage the short-sighted, iterative questions that would lead to the "faster horse," or in this case a whole bunch of tiny features that miss the big picture.
Its because the people who makes the decisions are too far removed from the people doing the actual work.
In an industrial/manufacturing setting, this might work because the people doing the work isn't doing anything creative (just labour). In a research and development setting, this cannot work because a decision needs to be made using information obtained from "the trenches", and management often are not in the trenches.
This is why small startups are always more agile and moves fast, can come up with products that suite their target better than a corp. I dont think this can change, unless the corp change their method of operation from a hierarchical one to a very flat, self-managed groups of small people, and trim the fat out. This has to start with "trust", and now-a-days, trust is hard to come by.
I'm pretty much Microsoft's target demographic with Surface: I use Office all day at work, and often need to work on the go because things pop up. I might say I want Windows on a tablet, but that's not really what I want. I want perfect office document compatibility, so I can review markups and changes on the go. I want to be able to log into my company's domain and browse my company's DMS. But that's what I really want, even if I say I want Windows on a tablet. I don't really mean I want full-blown Windows with its mouse-and-keyboard centric UI on a tablet...