two ships passing in the night.

Even tech companies, with their legendary emphasis on building "matrixed" organizations, can't avoid an inevitable by-product of growing too big, too fast: lack of internal communication.

Take Microsoft's Zune, for example. The supposed iPod-killer is in launch mode right now. And it's getting a bit of buzz from the tech press and devoted users. But TechCrunch makes an interesting observation today. Apparently, Zune is incompatible with Vista. Not cool.

I've always believed that Apple's competitive advantage lies in the fact that it is the only computer company that builds the hardware, software, operating system, and peripherals in house. This means that the Mac, iPod, iTunes, and OS X work together effortlessly in the most efficient computing platform on the planet.

No doubt, our friends in Redmond will get this sorted out. You don't spend nearly $6B annually in R&D to allow short-term mistakes like this to impact your long-term strategy. Yet another reason why I want to be an entrepreneur.