Look at Satya Nadella. His new vision for Microsoft and all the key decisions he made are really what you see in its stocks. From +12 years of nothing to twice its valuation.
The difference is like night and day. Ballmer was all about monopolization, vendor lock-in, ruling the developer community with an iron fist, and funneling all business into the proven profit centers. Nadella understands the value of interoperability, evangelizing your own tech while trying to advance community efforts, embracing open source, and developing new lines of business independent of legacy products.
He behaves like a proper CEO.
> Also, Satya doesn't act like a clown in public
Are we talking about the same Satya who said that women shouldn't ask for better salaries but instead trust karma? Are you fucking kidding me?
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/oct/10/microsoft...
Care to guess what job (or, equally likely, what prison) Steve Jobs would've found himself in had he not stumbled into Steve Wozniak? Because without Wozniak, Jobs' best chance at success would have been a cart full of hot dogs after some ball game. Or, knowing his cult-like charisma, maybe a few old ladies he could've conned for money.
I'm not trying to be gratuitously mean, I genuinely would like you to think about this. If the "visionary" would not have had this head start, i.e. Wozniak creating something amazing; suppose Wozniak would've never existed, do you still think Jobs would have actually been in any way successful?
You can look all the problems a bad CEO can do : Kenneth Lay with Enron, Theranos, Twitter, Caterpillar 2 years ago even thought he said he didn't know. But it was his job to know... And now Travis Kalanick with the culture he created at Uber and now the damages it makes.
And you can look at all the value a great CEO can do too.
Though that is not normal. You wouldn't expect a new CEO of a small bank to overtake JPMorgan Chase.
Let me give you some insight that you might be unaware of. When the iPhone was announced, there were a few offices in Nokia where people were crying more than they would at their relatives' funerals. You know why? Because they had that exact technology and prototypes similar to the iPhone, except that the Nokia execs didn't believe something like that would succeed, for multiple (and seemingly valid) reasons. Since Apple didn't really have much to lose they launched the iPhone, a phone that despite being initially inferior to other phones (multiple reasons which I'm not going to get into) managed to get a huge market share eventually (never underestimate people's desire to show off fancy new trinkets; I think it's called fashion).
Anyway, arguably one of the biggest reasons for iPhone's success were the apps. Now, this isn't mentioned often because it risks spoiling a nice fantasy, but did you know that Jobs was actually against the concept of developer-written apps, as the ones that you find in the App Store? Yeah, there were some people who came up with the idea and had to work very hard to convince the "visionary" that this would be indeed a game-changer. He reluctantly had to concede, because in the end money is better than ego.
So yeah, judging by everything that I read, and by the fact that I don't go building shrines to any person associated to with a successful project, leads me to believe that the Jobs success story was a simple accident. Simple example - look at the huge market share that Mac's have. Oh wait, that's right; they don't. And not for lack of trying, also. Jobs lucked out with the iPhone, just as he lucked out when he bumped into Wozniak and managed to somehow be in charge without actually putting in too much work. Actually, dodging work without being caught was probably one of his most developed features (I know, fanboys will say it's a good thing; sure it's good, if you're a parasite feeding off other people's work).
I know a lot of Americans believe in the American dream and that if they work as hard and are brilliant as Steve Jobs, they too could be successful like him. Heh. Funny.
Satya's is about openness and meeting developers and customers where they are. This is what has value and what Wall Street is excited about.