Painter. Olympic athlete. Scuba diver. Accomplished jazz artist. Astronaut. Excel.

Something doesn't quite fit here, and I'm not sure what. We went back and considered some of the greats. Coltrane. Armstrong. Rembrandt. Jacque Cousteau. Jackie Joyner-Kersee. Can Microsoft help churn out more of these greats?

We immediately did some leg work. The ad says to check out microsoft.com/potential. We did. We searched for the greats. We searched for art, saxophone playing, scuba diving, astronauts. But we didn't find anything really helpful.

We thought about a young Van Gogh, feverishly splashing colors across his canvas and thought, "Imagine if he had Powerpoint."

We pictured a young Charlie Parker, sitting for hours in his apartment, a cascade of notes gushing forth like dancing sheets of rain and wondered, "Imagine if he was also a Certified Microsoft Engineer."

We reminisced about that 1980 cinderella U.S. hockey team, incredibly beating the Soviets against all odds and we thought, "if only they had a solid enterprise solution - they could have seriously increased their productivity AND their revenues.

We checked out Microsoft's mission for this "Potential" campaign. "Excellence in everything we do" was one bulletpoint that really stirred inspirational thoughts. But when you get to the heart of the matter, in Microsoft's own words, their mission is:

Enabling People to Do New Things

Broadening choices for customers by identifying new areas of business; incubating new products; integrating new customer scenarios into existing businesses; exploring acquisitions of key talent and experience; and integrating more deeply with new and existing partners.

There really isn't much more to say, is there? The next time I fired up Word, I immediately thought of Mingus.