Satya Nadella: evaluation

Transcript context

…The sixth CEO that you’re talking about, who’ll get to use the research you’re starting now, what are you doing to retain the future Satya Nadellas so that they're in a position to become future leaders? It's fascinating. This is our 50th year, and I think a lot about it. The way to think about it is, longevity is not a goal; relevance is. The thing that I have to do and all 200,000 of us have to do every day is: Are we doing things that are useful and relevant for the world as we see it evolving, not just today, but tomorrow? We live in an industry where there's no franchise value, so that’s the other hard part. If you take the R&D budget that we will spend this year, it’s all speculation on what's going to happen five years from now. You have to basically go in with that attitude, saying, "We are doing things that we think are going to be relevant." So that's what you have to focus on. Then know that there's a batting average, and you're not going to get- you have to have a high tolerance for failure. You have to take enough shots on goal to be able to say, "Okay, we will make it to the other side as a company." That's what makes it tricky in this industry. Speaking of- you just mentioned that you're two months away from your 50th anniversary of Microsoft’s founding. If you look at the top 10 companies by market cap, or top 5, basically, everybody else but Microsoft is younger than Microsoft. It's an interesting observation about why the most successful companies often are quite young. The average Fortune 500 company will last 10 to 15 years. What has Microsoft done to remain relevant for this many years? How do you keep refounding?…

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