When the Microsoft Surface first appeared, many critics panned it as a clumsy move into hardware — a device that was stuck in the middle, a half-step behind the hot market for tablets and only a half-step beyond the dying market for PCs. When the Surface then took off and gave new life to the Microsoft turnaround, it seemed to reinforce the upside-down logic of the company’s digital transformation. However, what few people realized was that Microsoft leveraged an old but often overlooked tool that has remarkable power to manage such transitions.