Clarity of vision

I admit to being surprised by Yahoo! Appointing Marissa Mayer is inspired. In retrospect, as everything does, it makes perfect sense. Marissa is bright, focused and media aware. Unfortunately for her Google has two leaders who are just getting into their stride. The possibility of promotion and growth were going to be denied for the foreseeable future. Yahoo! on the other hand has squandered the last ten years. Seeming unable to make the transition from providing answers from the web to becoming a conduit for the web. Both Facebook and Google dominate more of the experience of the web driving ad revenue with it.
Many of Yahoo!'s contemporaries  have strikingly similar leaders. Charismatic visionaries who ideas galvanise the companies they head. Providing a focus that is carried though to the products they produce.  It is this clarity of vision which lifts them and there companies above the vagaries of the competition.

Steve Jobs is the most obvious example of a leader with a clear idea of what the company should be trying to achieve and driving that vision.  Within the technology industry there are others such as Jack Dorsey - Twitter, Sergey Brin - Google, Mark Shuttleworth - Canonical.

Marissa's vision

Marissa Mayer has been an important leader within Google. She has been responsible for Google's famous white home page, the design of Gmail, Google News and Google Images. She is a high profile individual in Silicon Valley. Yahoo! has the building blocks to create a compelling and unified experience, not unlike Google and Facebook. Within its portfolio is Flickr and Mail, two valuable assets but it lacks a true social context and is lacking productivity. Perhaps it should buy services such as Zoho or integrate with Ubuntu to create a unified service rich tablet and phone experience.