We're Going To Try To Do More

The One Thing That I Think Separates Microsoft From A Lot Of Other People Is We Make Bold Bets. We're Persistent About Them, But We Make Them. A Lot Of People Won't Make A Bold Bet. A Bold Bet Doesn't Assure You Of Winning, But If You Make No Bold Bets You Can't Continue To Succeed. Our Industry Doesn't Allow You To Rest On Your Laurels Forever. I Mean, You Can Milk Any Great Idea. 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.

The Company [microsoft] Really Has To Chart A Direction In Mobile Devices. Because If You're Going To Be Mobile-first, Cloud-first You Really Do Need To Have A Sense Of What You're Doing In Mobile Devices. I Had Put The Company On A Path. The Board As I Was Leaving Took The Company On A Path By Buying Nokia, They Kind Of Went Ahead With That After I Told Them I Was Going To Go. The Company, Between Me And The Board, Had Taken That Sort Of View. Satya, He's Certainly Changed That. He Needs To Have A Clear Path Forward. But I'm Sure He'll Get There.

I Think There Are Lots Of Opportunities To Improve The Product. When You Read The Press, People Say, "oh, The Product Needs Improvement." I Look At That And Say, "hey, That's An Exciting Thing To Get Behind!" Because They Can Improve That Product. That Leaves More Upside From An Innovation And Revenue Potential Than You're Gonna Find In A Lot Of Places. So You Could Say That's A Downside, I See That As An Opportunity.

Ultimately Progress Is Measured Sort Of Through The Eyes Of Users.

I Don't Really Know That Anybody's Proven That A Random Collection Of People Doing Their Own Thing Actually Creates Value.