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.
Only our company and a handful of others are poised to write the future.
Maybe I’m an emblem of an old era, and I have to move on.
This is all about having great leaders who can drive agile innovation and agile decision-making.
Great companies have high cultures of accountability, it comes with this culture of criticism I was talking about before, and I think our culture is strong on that.
I think it would be absolutely reckless and irresponsible for anyone to try and break up Microsoft.
Analytics only goes so far. Basketball, more than baseball, for example, is really a team sport.
I loved every minute of my time at Microsoft, but I had always envisioned having another phase of life just because I thought that would be interesting. It had never been my plan to work until I literally didn’t want to do anything and then hang it up.
There’s a huge crowd out there that basically will go nuts recommending to every coach on the planet, “Hey, coach, I’ve been playing with the analytics. I think you should do X, Y, and Z.”
If you look at companies with upside potential, Twitter’s right there. They’ve established a brand in a world where it’s extremely difficult to establish a brand. It’s a global brand, people recognize it, people want to let you know what their Twitter handles are, etc.
As a shareholder I have expressed my frustration with not getting more information about revenue and margins from the cloud.
In many ways I think the company’s doing quite a good job. If you look at the transition to Office 365 we started when I was there, I’m excited about that and I think the company’s doing a great job on that.
Since I’m not a seller of the stock, I don’t really care what it is today.
I think good ideas are usually better done quickly than slowly.
Ultimately progress is measured sort of through the eyes of users.
It’s hard to invent a new thing, and it’s just as hard to invent another new thing.
Any idea that turns out to be truly great can be harvested for tens of years. On the other hand, if you want to continue to be great, you’ve got to bet on new things, big, bold bets.
Accessible design is good design – it benefits people who don’t have disabilities as well as people who do. Accessibility is all about removing barriers and providing the benefits of technology for everyone.
It’s always great when you get a lot of people pushing themselves to do better, be better, invent better, better serve, better lead customers in new directions.
The way I do things I usually always prefer to have a very clear strategy and be very focused. At the same time to be very rock solid, and crisp in execution.
The stock market has always had its own meter. Sometimes it’s ahead of itself, sometimes it’s behind itself. A broken watch is right twice a day.