Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says he thinks Bill Gates had his priorities all wrong.
Around 1980, Bill Gates gave Microsoft, the company he founded, a clear mission: "A computer on every desk and in every home."
But Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who started at the company as a programmer in 1992 and rose to the top job in 2014, thinks Gates' famous mission had a big flaw.
"When I joined the company in 1992, we used to talk about our mission as putting a PC in every home, and by the end of the decade we have done that, at least in the developed world," Nadella told USA Today in a profile published on Monday. "It always bothered me that we confused an enduring mission with a temporal goal."
In other words, Nadella is saying that Gates' vision for the future of Microsoft had a logical stopping point, yet it did not take into account what the company's direction would be once the goal was achieved. In the 2000s, under former CEO Steve Ballmer, Microsoft became better known for its efforts to preserve its control of the PC industry than for its innovation.
Nadella believes in making Microsoft more driven by a sense of purpose — in 2015, he said Microsoft's mission was "to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more." And he's encouraged the company not to rest on its laurels.
Under Nadella, Microsoft has taken the focus off Windows and the PC and pinned its hopes to the rise of the Microsoft Azure and Office 365 cloud-computing products, both of which are growing as the company's older businesses stagnate. While this approach hasn't translated to huge revenue growth, it has revitalized the company's image.
Gates told USA Today that he enjoys working with Nadella, serving his twice-removed successor as a special adviser and helping guide the company's investments into cutting-edge technology as it competes with Apple, Google, and Amazon.
Read the full USA Today interview with Nadella »
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