If the CEO doesn’t see the playing field, nobody else can. The team may need to see it too, but the CEO really needs to be able to see the entire competitive space.

I love the fact that Satya Nadella's checked the checkbox for cross-platform for a number of our services. I still think it's very important to do the right kind of innovative integration across Windows and our hardware platforms with our cloud services. I think the company's doing a lot of good stuff. Real competition in AWS. Real competition in terms of the clients, particularly from a hardware perspective, there's also [competition] from Chrome. But all in all pretty good.

I have four words for you: I love this company, yeah!

I've got my kids brainwashed: You don't use Google, and you don't use an iPod.

Throughout our history, Microsoft has won by making big, bold bets. I believe that now is not the time to scale back the scope of our ambition or the scale of our investment. While our opportunities are greater than ever, we also face new competitors, faster-moving markets and new customer demands.

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.

The stock market has always had its own meter. Sometimes it's ahead of itself, sometimes it's behind itself. A broken watch is right twice a day.