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Unknown A
If you sort of look at history of tech, it's not that people wouldn't invest. It is like you need to have a culture that knows how to take an innovation and scale it. That's the hard part, Quite frankly, for CEOs and management teams, which is kind of like fascinating, right? Which is it's as much about good judgment and it's about good culture. And sometimes we've gotten it right, sometimes we've gotten it wrong. I mean, I can tell you the thousand projects from MSR that we should have probably led with, but we didn't. And I always ask myself why. And it's because we were not able to get enough sort of conviction and that complete thought of how to not only take the innovation, but make it into a useful product with a business model that we can then go to market with. That's the job of CEOs and management teams is not to just be excited about any one thing, but to be able to actually execute on a complete thing.
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Unknown A
And that's easier said than done.
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Unknown B
When you mentioned the possibility of six or I guess three subsequent CEOs of Microsoft, if each of them increases the market cap by an order of magnitude, by the time you've got the next breakthrough, you'll be like the world economy or something.
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Unknown A
Or remember, the world is going to be growing at 10% so we'll be fine.
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Unknown B
Is being a company man underrated? So you've spent most of your career at Microsoft and look, you could say like maybe one of the reasons you've been able to add so much value as you've seen the culture and the history and the technology and have all this context by rising up through the ranks, should more companies be run by people who have this level of context?
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Unknown A
That's a great question. I mean, I've not thought about it that way, but yeah, I mean I, I have sort of, you know, through my, whatever, 34 years now of Microsoft, it has basically been each year I felt more excited about being at Microsoft versus thinking that, oh, I'm a company person or what have you. Right. I mean that is not like I didn't go in there and saying is it is about. And I think that seriously, even for anybody joining Microsoft, that means it's not like they're joining Microsoft as long as they feel that they can use this as a platform for their both economic return, but also a sense of purpose and a sense of mission that they can accomplish by using us as a platform. Right. So therefore that's the contract. So I think yes, Companies can have to create a culture that allows people to come in and become company people like me and Microsoft got it more right than wrong, at least in my case.
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Unknown A
And I hope that remains the case.
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Unknown B
How do you. The sixth CEO that you're talking about that will get to you is the researcher starting now. What are you doing to retain the future? Satya Nadella so that they're in a position to become future leaders?
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Unknown A
I think longevity is not a goal, relevance is. And we live in an industry where there's no franchise value. Right. So that's the other hard part, which is if you take the R and D budget that we will spend this year is all about what is. It's all speculation on what's going to happen five years from now. And so you got to basically go in with that attitude that saying, look, we are doing things that we think are going to be relevant. And so that's what you got to focus on. And then know that there's a batting average and you're not going to get. You have to have high tolerance for failure. That's the other thing which I think is unlike you have to be able to sort of take enough shots on goal to be able to say, okay, we will make it to the other side as a company.
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Unknown A
And that's what makes it tricky in this industry.
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Unknown B
If you look at the top 10 companies by market cap or top 5 depending on how you count Saudi, Aramco, basically everybody else but Microsoft is younger than Microsoft. And it's a really interesting observation about why. The most successful companies often are quite young. The average Fortune 500 company will last 10, 15 years. What has Microsoft done to remain relevant for this many years? How do you keep refounding?
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Unknown A
I love that even Rita Hoffman uses that term. I love that refounding thing. And I think that that's the mindset. Like I mean people talk about founder mode and I sort of, I think for us mere model CEOs and others, it's more like, hey, the refounder mode. I think many times companies feel over constrained by either business model or what have you and you just have to unconstrain yourself.
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Unknown B
If you did leave Microsoft, what company would you start?
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Unknown A
Company I would start Matt. That's where the company man and me, I'll never leave Microsoft.