I'm not sure if I agree with the premise. Microsoft had a lot of big successes in the "dead" period - Xbox for example is pretty absent, as is Surface. They al

I'm not sure if I agree with the premise. Microsoft had a lot of big successes in the "dead" period - Xbox for example is pretty absent, as is Surface. They also had a lot of non-successes that were revolutionary in their own right - basically inventing the first major music streaming service. Also, most of the key changes at Microsoft were underway before Nadella - most importantly getting business customers to agree to subscription service models and cloud migration.