[Music]
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