There was an interesting article on him linked from The Diff newsletter today. It seems a large part of his strengths are strategic M&A.
"1. Larry Ellison has an insight which leads to a breakthrough initiative which has the potential to reposition Oracle to the forefront of the industry, completely bypassing the competition.
2. It works.
3. Larry Ellison checks out to go sailing or play tennis or something for like a year.
4. Oracle gets into trouble. New entrants and existing competitors are eating away at its market share, and Oracle is losing head-to-head.4
6. Divest losing tens of billions in the industries where this strategy doesn’t work (see adtech, oracle data cloud - few billions in acquisitions just closed down
not even sold)
7. Doesn’t matter, still have billions to spare and can eat huge failures
"1. Larry Ellison has an insight which leads to a breakthrough initiative which has the potential to reposition Oracle to the forefront of the industry, completely bypassing the competition.
2. It works.
3. Larry Ellison checks out to go sailing or play tennis or something for like a year.
4. Oracle gets into trouble. New entrants and existing competitors are eating away at its market share, and Oracle is losing head-to-head.4
5. GOTO 1."
https://www.notboring.co/p/who-is-larry-ellison