Earlier quoted context omitted.
Kind of odd, being an employee there, I've never heard of eleven of the twelve board members before.
Most of the board members seem to be partners at various investment firms. Many of them don't seem to even remotely tech people. It's kind of sad that the Microsoft board lacks any external visionaries.
I think this is related to the fact that Microsoft announced a deal few years back that any entity with more than 4% stock ownership automatically gets right to have a seat on the board. During those times, stock was struggling and this might have been strategy to pull some investors who wants to have control as well. In my personal opinion, this was quite unfortunate because such strategies usually invites "activist" investors types. These types are rarely good for long term future of the company as they often enforce short term strategy such as massive buy backs, dividents etc to prop up the stock while actively prevent large capex needed to go after long term big bets.