Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Talking Tech with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella!”.
First of all, satya such a pleasure. Thank you for joining me, so we’re on microsoft campus right now. Can you tell me about this room we’re in because this is a sort of an interesting space yeah i mean this is a space where we think about uh workspaces, so we’re not just talking about software, but even the physical space, and we get to play around And sort of imagine what the future could look like. Yeah, there’s a lot of cool stuff in here, so you’re, the ceo of microsoft. You have a big job.
A lot of people of course know what microsoft does, but i’m curious just what’s your day-to-day, like especially this time of year, it’s super busy you’ve got these new products coming out. There’S a lot happening. What do you feel like you’re doing often right now as a ceo, you know to me: it’s such a privilege to be a part of microsoft. I’Ve sort of spent all my adult life here and i think the thing that’s unique about microsoft is the opportunity i get in any one of the hundred thousand plus plus people who get work here, get to really think about.
How are we empowering others through our technology? Right, i mean that’s, we are, i always say we are a platform and a productivity company at the core uh, so whether it’s a student in a school or a small business or a large corporation, the question is not about the tech that we produce. But what are they doing creating with tech and that’s even today, you know when i look at the meetings i’ve already had this morning. You know to be able to meet that cross-section of the world, that’s being impacted by tech, that’s just a privilege and, of course, being a ceo you’re, not only in meetings but you’re sort of representing the company and its vision for the future. And i’ve heard you say that you have a clear vision for the future of microsoft and we’ll get into that in a little bit.
But i also wonder so: you’ve been the ceo for a couple years, but you’ve been at microsoft for much much longer than that. So i’m curious if there are things that surprised you or that you found interesting, that you learned once you got to this position as a leadership role amir. Yes, that’s right.
I’Ve been close to 30 years now at microsoft, and you know close to five and a half years. A ceo time flies there’s a lot that i learned. I mean in particular, even though i grew up here, how multi-constituent the world is and what it means for a ceo to keep all of that in balance what it means for a company like us, it’s of course about our customers.
It’S about our employees. It’S about our partners, it’s about our shareholders, guess what it’s all about all of them all the time simultaneously and to me, that’s, i think, perhaps the realization uh. Maybe i used to think about one constituent before at a time right and now it’s a question of really thinking about all of it all the time. Gotcha a lot of multifaceted pieces of focus. Did you get any advice from so you followed up steve ballmer in that role, and i’ve also spoken to bill gates on this series? Do you talk to them at all, or do you get advice from them about leading this company? Oh absolutely and um, and in fact the best advice i got was from steve uh. In some sense it was his parting advice to me and i always remember that he sort of said, be bold and be right and it’s sort of.
If you’re, not bold, you don’t do big things, but if you’re not right, you’re not going to be there for much longer, and so therefore that ability to see the world as it is and yet at the same time defy it is what our business is. All about for now, satya nadella, my successor, is sort of taking things there to infinity and beyond. If you will okay, i have a quote from you to read about microsoft.
You say our business is to meet unmet and unarticulated needs of our customers, and i find that really interesting, because that’s a goal of a lot of businesses to be able to find out what cust potential customers are interested in and solve those things. How do you and how does microsoft figure out what people want before they know they want it? First, let me say: that’s our aspiration. In fact, the reason why i got to that was: i felt that what does it mean to codify design thinking in your culture right, it’s not about just go to the class called design.
Thinking uh! It’S it’s really about developing that deep sense of empathy for people. You are trying to serve, and that means meeting unmet unarticulated needs getting behind even the words and actions you observe in here, and that’s kind of where that comes from one of the things that we’re on a quest for at microsoft is what we call a growth Mindset or confronting our fixed mindset – and i think the real core of that is that empathy and that ability to continuously learn push conventional wisdom, um, and so i would say, that’s a journey that we’ll never come complete, but at least we can say today are we Learning are we today trying to be more empathetic towards that unmet unarticulated need out there in the world. I also have to be a big fan of microsoft’s design language right now and we’ve we’ve seen. You know this new hardware now with the surface pro 7, and these these incredibly sleek clean lines and everything everything is very well considered.
So i’m a fan of that um is this. A part of microsoft’s vision for the future is sort of the way tech looks. You know it’s. I would say: we’ve become much more conscious of why it’s important not just to think about the software experience but to think about the software experience as it manifests in beautiful devices with great design and aesthetic, because, ultimately, people relate to things as much as to software. Uh and i would say, that’s kind of really uh being what’s the stuff, if i say: what’s the biggest contribution of surface, it’s a you know, a very sizable business for us, we’re excited about the products it’s creating and, in fact, helping the entire pc industry, but The one thing that i’m most proud of of the surface is it’s created. I think that design sensibility inside the company that’s much more pervasive and there’s also i mean the products themselves are fantastic they’re.
Obviously, microsoft’s made windows devices. How do you think about them? Being competitors to other windows devices so something i’ve talked about all the time on this channel is google makes android devices and other companies make android devices. So there’s a potential advantage for that company to to do whatever they want ahead of time. Microsoft makes windows.
Microsoft makes windows devices and so do other companies. So how does this ecosystem? How do you think about that? Yeah relationship? No, it’s a great. I mean it’s a very important question for us. Obviously there is, you know, hundreds of millions of windows, uh devices sold each year and we make a small, very small percentage of them in surface.
So the goal here is to innovate on behalf of the entire ecosystem, create new categories. Take the r d risk. Take the inventory risk take the marketing risk, which sometimes is not possible for any one player in our ecosystem, and so therefore, that’s sort of really what led to even the creation.
If you think about surface, nobody thought a two in one kid good created and we created the category with surface. It took us a couple of tries to get there, but that was all risk that we had to as a company take and the other thing that you know i i’m you know. I love that allen k code.
If you’re serious about your software, you will take your hardware seriously and i think that makes sense and to us really going that extra mile, all the way to ensuring from silicon to the cloud things are coming together around the experience has been a very important thing For us, do you think of them as leading the way for potential other companies to follow so a lot of times, you’ll have design language, cues or small things that you can match with the hardware. Do you feel, like you know, tying all that experience together is something for others to follow, or is it just an option among the many options? No, it’s for sure. We expect uh others to follow, but at the same time, what we’re also trying to make sure is we’re building devices.
Ultimately, it’s just not a hobby. It is a core part of microsoft’s business, but in doing a great job with it, i think we are inspiring others to do also a great job and raise the game. If you look at the ecosystem today and the quality of the pcs coming out, let’s say this holiday from everyone and you compare it to sort of the pre-surface era.
That’S a market difference, so i think raising standards across the board is a super important, artifact and creation of new categories. All right so part of this ongoing ai conversation, i think, is a lot of fun. Um i’ve spoken to people who are very, very positive on ai and those who are you know more weary about his potential negatives. But i’ve seen with microsoft is doing great things with ai, for example, the neural chip on the surface pro x.
Taking a lot of those specific things with processing off of the main processor, how do you think about ai and and its potential upside? How do you weigh it against its potential downside? I mean i first start with a sense of possibility and optimism uh. In fact, one of the things that i care deeply about is how can ai bring more accessibility technology to people so, for example, what we’ve done with the eye gaze technology on windows is fairly magical right. I mean the fact that you can type with your gaze. Uh is now possible on any windows machine and that’s something that’s enabled by ai or what we’re doing with just computer vision and seeing ai or what we’re doing with learning tools.
The other thing inside of edge or in any office document you can now, if you have dyslexia, have the ability to read because of just the spacing that is just being managed through ai. So these are all things in fact that are bringing more people into the mainstream of our workforce and our society and that’s fantastic to see, but at the same time i’m clear-eyed about the unintended consequences. Let’S take bias right, i mean, if you take a language model that has been trained and if it’s sort of got bias embedded, you need to de-bias it. So that means we even have to raise the game in terms of the software engineering associated with the creation of ai, so that we really don’t have these unintended consequences.
So that’s. What i would say is the balance that all of us has created is the way i have to strike absolutely so if i have my my final question to you is there’s a lot of exciting things happening in the world of tech. What’S one super exciting thing to you in tech that microsoft is not yet involved with, look i mean uh. We definitely are not going to mars. You know directly, but indirectly we would love. In fact, the one thing that i love about microsoft being that technology uh enabler is we don’t need to be involved in all cool things in tech.
We can empower all the people out there who are trying to do cool things around the world. Yeah love it be strong in the things that you’re strong with and explore in other areas, absolutely and and and really help others. You know the thing that i’m most excited about is whether it’s somebody who’s trying to create a solar grade in kenya in the cloud or someone who’s creating an autonomous vehicle. Both of them can use computing tools, computing technology from us and really democratize the reach of digital technology awesome. Well. I appreciate you sitting down in this exciting time to talk tech for a little bit and hopefully we get to do it again. Sometime absolutely, thank you. So much thank you. .