New CEO aims to make Microsoft a better corporate citizen : Ballmer changes the company culture

In 2000, Steve Ballmer took over from Bill Gates as chief executive of Microsoft. In so doing, he took on the massive challenge of restructuring the company’s management of finance, sales, product development, marketing and strategic planning. Ballmer was charged with reinventing the company that had previously been synonymous with Gates, and giving Microsoft a new identity. In their Business Week article about the subsequent transformation process, Jay Greene, Steve Hamm and Jim Kerstetter describe a now‐legendary memorandum sent by Ballmer in June 2002 to 50,000 employees, entitled “Realizing potential”.