“WE NEED A GLOBAL CONSENSUS ON PRIVACY, SECURITY”

SSATYA NADELLA, MICROSOFT CEO, was interviewed by a team of India Today Group editors, consisting of RAJ CHENGAPPA, PROSENJIT DATTA and SANGHAMITRA CHAKRABORTY, at his office in Seattle, USA. Excerpts from the interview: INDIA TODAY GROUP: It is brave of you to write a book in the midst of being the CEO—in the fog of war, as you call it. Normally CEOs wait for their successes and years later talk about it. So why did you do it?

SATYA NADELLA: The impetus for the book came from not as much trying to recount what has happened or even just talk about the future, but to talk about the process of transformation. Because I realised that so much of what one does as a leader in any context—and also what one does in life as you live it—is deal with change. So, I felt that reflecting on that while you’re going through it is, in fact, cathartic and clarifying, rather than do one of those exposed ‘look-backs’.

One of the inspirations for this was a meeting with Steve (Ballmer, Nadella’s predecessor) maybe six months after he left. When I asked him, “Hey, are you writing a book?”, he had a fantastic answer. He said, “No, it’s too boring to look back into the past.” And that’s when it struck me—right now, while I’m in the midst of it. By no stretch am I claiming the journey is done, the transformation is finished or any successes have been achieved. But, I thought, let me reflect on Microsoft’s own journey, the moments of transformation, and then our own society. And so that’s the three stanzas that were really the impetus for it. ITG: You talk of the soul of Microsoft and ask existential questions in the book. Isn’t that somewhat of an Indian thing to do?

SN: As far as this notion of the soul, whenever I think about companies, a lot is talked about strategy and, obviously, that’s super important. A lot is talked about technology, obviously very important too. You have got to get the right technology at the right time, and then you’ve got to express it with your strategy and execution. But what is not stressed by these two bookends to long-term, real competitive advantage is that sense of purpose, identity and culture. When I look back, we’ve been a very successful company over 40-plus years. And whenever we’ve gotten things right on those two sides is when we’ve achieved great success. When we did things which were not grounded in that sense of purpose, by looking around and saying, “Oh, who else is doing what?” or even a sense of envy, it didn’t work. So that’s why this invoking the core soul and rediscovering it has been a very big part of at least what we’ve done in these initial phases.

ITG: You asked the fundamental question—why Micro— soft should exist and do the things it is doing. What is the answer you came up with?

SN: The first product that Microsoft created when Bill (Gates) and Paul (Allen) started the company was the Basic interpreter for the Altair. And at that very birth of Microsoft, it defined everything that we’ve done and everything that we will do going forward—which is we build technology so that others can create more technology. That’s who we are. Sometimes people ask me, “Are you a consumer company? Are you an enterprise company?” We’re neither. We

are a company that creates technology so that others can create more technology. So, to me, that’s who we are: we empower. We talk about our mission as empowering every person and every organisation on the planet to achieve more. And each one of those words has deep meaning for us because we think about people and institutions people build. We can’t just celebrate our technology. It has to be celebrating others’ success in creating their own technology. That is what I think is Microsoft’s identity.

ITG: When you asked yourself why do you do what you do, what did that throw up?

SN: There’s a very powerful moment, in my mid-30s, when I was working with Doug Burgum, who happens to be the governor of North Dakota right now. And he said something which completely changed my outlook to how I think about what I do. He said, “Look, you’re going to end up spending more time at work (in my case, at Microsoft) than you perhaps will with your own kids so it had better have deep meaning... it can’t be something that you do because it’s sort of transactional.” And when I look back, all of the times that I’ve had the most satisfaction were not really about any particular technology or product or business success, it was because of the impact of what we did, or what I did around me. And that ability to draw on your own personal passion and philosophy, and take this very broad platform that Microsoft creates, and connect the two, is tremendous. We may never get it right, in fact, you know, frustration is part of life, part of any context, but at least that’s the ideal. That’s what makes me tick.

ITG: Did you ever think when you started out that you’d be part of a bunch of people who were out there changing the world?

SN: What I think was ingrained into me was a sense of curiosity. That ability to look at things, opportunities given, and to assume that that’s amazing. I never remember at Microsoft any job that I had and feel that, “Oh, god, this job is less important than the one I had.” I always felt that this is the greatest job, it’s the greatest opportunity, I’m so thrilled to have it. It’s some combination of my father, my mother, and their influence on me, which was a strange amalgam. But it did create that, where there was never this thing about, “Oh, look for something next.” As opposed to, “Take what you’ve got and really, really exploit it to its fullest, to have the deepest impact.” That, perhaps more than anything else, has defined who I am.

ITG: And if you were to speak to your younger self with what you know today, what would you say?

SN: If had to go back, I would reinforce that, now that I have a better understanding of it. Because so much of life is lived in anticipation of something. It’s a cliché, but it’s the most powerful one, which is that you’ve got to be able to mindfully live in the moment because that’s all you’ve got. It’s a tough one to understand. But that is, I think, perhaps what has made the most difference for me.

ITG: Bill Gates, in his foreword to your book, talks of this being the beginning of the digital revolution. That’s a surprise. Aren’t we in the middle of the revolution and reaching its zenith?

SN: It’s fascinating. I study a lot of these massive shifts that have happened throughout human history. Obviously, the big one is the industrial revolution, because it’s amazing to think about what the industrial revolution did. Until 1750, the world GDP in all parts (if you leave some parts of the globe), especially for most parts of Asia, Europe, it was all the same. There was not that much disparity in terms of per capita income and quality of life and what have you. And then the industrial revolution completely changed it. There’s this fantastic book by Robert J. Gordon (The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The US Standard of Living since the Civil War), who talks about the rise and fall of American productivity. He talks about how, for example, in 1870 if you were walking in Manhattan, the most likely thing that’s going to happen to you is you’re going to have horse manure all over your shoes. Whereas you go into 1940, you and I can walk in and feel like, yeah, maybe we don’t have some

social media and some television, but otherwise, we’ll have running water, hot water, plumbing, cars, air conditioning, everything that we are used to and it’ll feel pretty awesome. And that just happened in a period of 70 years. And so I sort of say, wow, what’s the parallel in the fourth industrial revolution, which is digital technology? Gordon himself talks about the productivity gains which, obviously, are core to economic growth, which are core to an entire society benefitting. In the mid-’90s to the mid-2000s is when that happened and a lot of it is attributed to actually the personal computer or PC in the workplace. Since then, we’ve been so consumer-led—consumption-led, I would term it— that we haven’t had the level of economic prosperity that’s been more evenly distributed because of digital technology. So, therefore, from that perspective, I think we need more technology and a broader impact from that technology.

ITG: So what are the next big things in technology that will power it?

SN: There are at least three broad things. One is: how can technology be made such that more of us can access it in more natural ways? The ultimate is when a computer is in front of your eyes and you’re not even distinguishing between the real world and the virtual world. That’s what we call the mixed reality world. So that’s one aspect of fundamental shift and change. Another aspect is intelligence, machine intelligence or artificial intelligence. One of the fundamental things that I talk a lot about is in all of this abundance of computing and technology, what is still scarce, is human attention. The only rescue there, is for something like artificial intelligence to help me focus on things that matter the most to me and to my life and to my organisation, to my family. So, therefore, AI is another aspect that’s going to have significant impact in individual lives, organisations, and economies at large. And then the last aspect is if we want to create more of this abundance of computing interfaces and experiences, everything that’s powered by AI, you need lots more computing power. You need to, in fact, get beyond even what has been the classical computer, beyond Moore’s Law, because we’re reaching the limits of physics in terms of our ability to draw more out of that architecture. And so this is where I think something like quantum computing completely changes it. We have a very exciting program at Microsoft, and there are some others also working on it, where the fundamental breakthroughs in physics, math and computer science have to come together to invent, essentially, a new form of computing.

ITG: You mentioned going beyond Moore’s Law. Is there a new law that you could think of for technology growth?

SN: If there’s a universal law, the one thing that I’ve realised is that whenever you assume that you’ve found the last device, the last computer, the most ubiquitous computer, all you’ve got to do is wait a little and there will be more computing, not less computing. That will be my equivalent.

ITG: So let’s call it ‘Satya’s Law’ (laughter). You have written extensively about technology democratising the life of people across the world. Do you think that we’re reaching a stage where we are talking now of who is creating and controlling the technology? Is that only going to increase the disparity between different parts of the world? SN: Quite frankly, that’s been one of the big questions I’ve always had. I always used to be amazed as to what was happening in Aurangzeb’s court while the industrial revolution was going on. Like, what must have been the milieu? The key seems to be: what do you do with the technology once you have access? It’s that intensity of usage of technology, broadly. In the Indian context, there’s this acronym that people use: the ABCD of India, which is Astrology, Bollywood, Cricket and Darshan, or what have you, is the extent of sort of India’s interest in terms of use of anything new. You have got to go beyond that. You can’t celebrate just, oh, wow, everybody has a smartphone. What are they doing? What is the downstream implication of it? Unless and until there is intensity of usage of technology in a very broad-spectrum way within a local economy, you’re not creating the digital surplus. Obviously we

“SO MUCH OF LIFE IS LIVED IN ANTICIPATION OF SOMETHING... IT’S A CLICHE BUT YOU’VE GOT TO BE ABLE TO MINDFULLY LIVE IN THE MOMENT. BECAUSE THAT’S ALL YOU’VE GOT”