Most people still steal music.
If the CEO doesn’t see the playing field, nobody else can. The team may need to see it too, but the CEO really needs to be able to see the entire competitive space.
Our industry is going through quite a wave of innovation and it’s being powered by a phenomenon which is referred to as the cloud.
We’ve grown from 18% of the profits of the top 25 companies in our industry to 23% of the profits of the top 25 companies in our industry over the last five years. Profits are up over 70%, where the industry profit is up about 35%. Pretty good.
I’d like to own Microsoft shares until I either give something to charity or I die.
I’m very, very bullish about our prospects, and as I tell our board, as I tell our employees, this is the time to invest. There’s so much opportunity. Let’s just invest in that opportunity, and really get after it.
I’m not sure blogs are necessarily the best place to get a pulse on anything. People want to blog for a variety of reasons, and that may or may not be representative.
Make hiring a top priority.
You can have an Apple in the phone business, or a RIM, and they can do very well, but when 1.3 billion phones a year are all smart, the software that’s gonna be most popular in those phones is gonna be software that’s sold by somebody who doesn’t make their own phones.
Let’s face it, the Internet was designed for the PC. The Internet is not designed for the iPhone. That’s why they’ve got 75,000 applications – they’re all trying to make the Internet look decent on the iPhone.
As a global company, our future growth and success requires that we constantly look at ways to improve our ability to serve customers worldwide.
So, I think the output of our innovation is great. We have a culture of self-improvement. I know we can continue to improve. There is no issue. But at the same time, our absolute level of output is fantastic.
Getting the big things right that make all the money, that’s long cycle, really executing in a way that allows you to do it, that’s short cycle.
I’d rather use Windows and Internet Explorer in Hell than I’d use Linux and Mozilla Firefox in Heaven!
Everyone likes to differentiate between business and consumers but I don’t see the difference really. Most people are people. I get personal and business mail and I have one set of contacts from my life. I don’t want to manage two sets. I want one view of my world.
It’s how tenacious you are that will determine your success.
I didn’t leave business school to go bankrupt.
Our people, our shareholders, me, Bill Gates, we expect to change the world in every way, to succeed wildly at everything we touch, to have the broadest impact of any company in the world.
I have lots of sources of information about what’s going on at the company. I think I have a pretty good pulse on where we are and what people are thinking.
I come back to the same thing: We’ve got the greatest pipeline in the company’s history in the next 12 months, and we’ve had the most amazing financial results possible over the last five years, and we’re predicting being back at double-digit revenue growth in fiscal year ’06.