Julie Larson-Green had presented her work to Bill Gates earlier in her career, and like just about everyone in her shoes, had to manage some butterflies beforehand. But in January 2005, the stakes were higher. The 39-year-old program manager was out to persuade the company's chairman to radically overhaul one of the most profitable products in the history of mankind: Microsoft Office. The drop-down menus and toolbars that Gates had personally helped craft in the '80s had to go, she would tell him, to be replaced by an onscreen "ribbon" loaded with options that would dynamically change according to what you were poised to do next.
