What people have studied is how much difference CEOs make. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10441713 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10441713 Lou had

What people have studied is how much difference CEOs make. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10441713 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10441713 Lou had 1993 until 2002. Scully had 1983–1993. I think Lou had the .com boom on his side. Scully not so much. There's definitely a deflection point around 1994 where everyone did a lot better. I guess the question is how did IBM and Apple perform relative to some benchmark under those leaders and even that could be just luck. Microsoft certainly outperformed both thees companies by a huge amount of this time period: https://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&chvs=logarithmic&chdeh=0&chfdeh=0&chdet=1495171493864&chddm=3270&chls=IntervalBasedLine&cmpto=NASDAQ:AAPL;NASDAQ:MSFT&cmptdms=0;0&q=NYSE:IBM&&fct=big&ei=o4EeWfvdJ4q3jAHE4regDQ https://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&... So compared to MSFT both were huge failures. [EDIT: it's interesting that at least during some Scully's tenure APPL tracks MSFT fairly closely... So at least during those years he was as good as Bill Gates? :) ]