Any idea that turns out to be truly great can be harvested for tens of years. On the other hand, if you want to continue to be great, you've got to bet on new things, big, bold bets.

Not only because the product wasn't a great product, but remember it took us five or six years to ship it. Then we had to sort of fix it. That was what I might call Windows 7.

I think these things social networks are going to have some legs,and yet there's a faddishness, a faddish nature about anything that basically appeals to younger people.

Our industry is going through quite a wave of innovation and it's being powered by a phenomenon which is referred to as the cloud.

As a shareholder I have expressed my frustration with not getting more information about revenue and margins from the cloud.

I don't know what a monopoly is until somebody tells me.

I meet with Satya [Nadella] what probably amounts to four or five times a year - either to brainstorm something or just as a shareholder, we'll sit down and chat. That's always quite helpful for me and hopefully him in terms of thinking things through. I still have a number of friends and colleagues who occasionally want to brainstorm or chat about something, and that's always fun.