Of those top three, only Newell really has experience running a company, and his company is structured radically differently than Microsoft's (Ignoring the wild

Of those top three, only Newell really has experience running a company, and his company is structured radically differently than Microsoft's (Ignoring the wildly different scales of the two companies, Valve has a vaguely non-hierarchical lattice-like organizational structure. I would not count on those CEO skills being transferable.) Linus can obviously manage a large project, but that in no way makes him a good fit for being the Microsoft CEO. I don't know much about the non-top three suggestions there, but the ludicious choices for the top three make me inclined to doubt them.