Bill Gates considers himself a technocrat but does not believe that technology will save the world. Or at least he does not believe that it will solve some of the pressing problems facing humanity, such as diseases, poverty and the lack of opportunity and despair they cause. "I love technology but if we want to improve our quality of life we have to deal with simple problems such as hunger, for example," Gates said in an exclusive interview with Richard Waters for the Financial Times.
The feeling that Bill Gates is drifting away from the problems of the company has intensified.
The short list
After numerous speculations, the list of Ballmer’s successor is getting shorter. According to insiders, it now contains the names of Alan Mulally, executive manager of Ford, Stephen Elop, former CEO of Nokia, Tony Bates, a Microsoft vice president and Satya Nadel, head of the company's division of cloud services. It is believed that there is at least one employee of the US technology giant as well as some candidates whose names are not mentioned. The initial list of candidates included the names of more than 40 people but the board has reduced the list to 10 names.
The company has even talked with Elop who has returned to Microsoft after the technology giant has bought Nokia’s mobile unit for $7.2 billion. It is also believed that Microsoft has contacted 67-year-old Mulally but the CEO of Ford has shown no interest in the position. It is expected that the company will announce the name of its subsequent manager by the end of the year.
Stephen Elop
Stephen Elop
One of the most likely candidates for the position of CEO of Microsoft, Stephen Elop, intends to break the tradition of Microsoft and to focus the company on the development of popular office applications such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint for the widest range of devices, including Apple smartphones and tablets, as three independent sources familiar with the ideas of the manager stated before Bloomberg.
A source told Bloomberg, on condition of anonymity, that Elop was planning to deviate from the strategy of Microsoft, according to which office applications should be a means to increase the demand for Windows operating systems and Windows Phone.
The initial refusal regarding the development of Office for iOS and Android has not helped Microsoft to stimulate the demand for its platforms. In the summer, the company launched a version of the office suite for iPhone and for smartphones using Android. To access these versions users must have a subscription to Office 365.
There have also been reports that Stephen Elop, as a possible CEO, will get rid of some units in the structure of Microsoft, which do not fit into the new strategy, which would affect the Bing search engine and Xbox consoles first.
Stephen Elop worked at Microsoft from February 2008 to September 2010, as president of the Business Division, which is responsible for the development of Office and which generated 32% of the company's revenue in the fourth quarter.
Microsoft is at the crossroads. The selections of its new CEO will determine the main directions of its future development. There are a number of unknowns and the shareholders do not have a single opinion as to what kind of person they are looking for, namely, a technocrat or a top manager. It is only clear that the company needs to act quickly but not hastily. It has been late, missing many of the trends in the technology sector. Therefore, the actions its new head will undertake must be well considered, decisive and forward-looking, which is definitely not an easy task!
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