Academic

Microsoft Finally Completes Transition

By Gordon Smith, Christine, Hurt, Vic Fleischer, Fred Tung, Lisa Fairfax, David Zaring

The W$J does a nice on the eight-year transition of power from Bill Gates to Steve Ballmer, which will culminate this summer in Gates vacating the premises to focus on philanthropy. For my taste, the most interesting tidbit from the story:

One concern for Mr. Ballmer was how to preserve Mr. Gates's role of technology visionary inside the company. Looking for guidance, Mr. Ballmer says he cracked open a book from his college years by Max Weber, the German sociologist, on how organizations handle the disappearance of "charismatic leaders."

On March 28, 2006, Mr. Ballmer described the book to Microsoft's board at a retreat in the San Juan Islands near Seattle, Microsoft executives say. One way for a firm to retain the charisma of a departing leader, Mr. Weber wrote some 100 years ago, is for the leader to name his own replacement.

Mr. Gates did just that. In June 2006, he named his own two successors as tech czars: Craig Mundie, one of Mr. Gates's chief technical advisers, and [Ray] Ozzie, the [founder of Groove Networks Inc.]

According to the story, Bill Gates has "stayed largely on the sidelines" in the Yahoo negotiations. If Yahoo's founders had followed his example, I suspect they wouldn't find themselves in such a mess right now.

Full post as published by Conglomerate on June 05, 2008 (boomark / email).