Why OneNote’s Co-Founder Walked Away From Microsoft | Chris Pratley

Chris Pratley, former Microsoft Corporate Vice President, famously invented OneNote, a hugely successful addition to the Office franchise. He shares insights from more than 30 years creating products from a people-centered design perspective.

Things like auto-save are now the norm, but Chris was one of the first people to push computing towards a save-less model back in the day. Discover how Chris led Word to victory in Japan, created OneNote, and shepherded Microsoft Garage as a greenhouse of bottom-up innovation.

0:00 Intro

0:59 From Waterloo to Japan, before the web

4:16 The final interview at Epson

6:30 Getting to Microsoft (and almost saying no)

10:00 Why Word was losing in Japan

14:04 How Word won Japan

17:51 How Microsoft's culture changed

24:07 The birth of OneNote

27:55 No save button: paper was the competition

32:27 Why OneNote couldn't require a tablet

35:10 Searching messy handwriting & the COMDEX launch

40:50 Bill Gates and the pen

43:40 Telling Bill Gates no

45:18 Bottom-up culture vs. the AI rush

50:39 Astronauts on horses, generative video & "AI slop"

55:05 Why he left Microsoft

55:36 Retirement, tennis & a new idea

58:34 One frame to ChatGPT1:02:59 Microsoft Garage

1:06:27 Why good ideas look stupid at first

1:09:23 Bonus: Is podcast discovery broken?