Final paragraphs of an extensive BW cover story article (on the cover: “No More Mr. Monkey Boy”)
History smiles on Jobs because Apple almost went under and came back stronger than before. Ballmer, you could say, never had the advantage of bouncing back from near-obliteration—he’s spent much of his time as CEO trying to expand beyond Gates’s vision. He’s not stuck in the past, he says, but learning new tricks. He’s running an early version of Windows 8 on a tablet and living an old digital dream. “I’ve gone paperless,” he boasts. “Zero! I get pissed when people have paper in meetings now.”
During a reflective moment, Ballmer says that if he had it to do all over again, he would dedicate more time to watching over the development process of products rather than just issuing a vision to his employees. “I’d say probably Bill and I were spending a lot more of our energy on where to go,” he says. “And we should balance our energy better on how to make sure we’re going to get where we want to go.”
