I think reconceptualizing Microsoft as a devices and services company is absolutely what our vision is all about. Office 365 and Azure on the services side are representative of it.
The question is: How are you able to organize your information, your tasks, and get stuff done spanning those different roles? Nobody lives in isolation.
I will talk about two sets of things. One is how productivity and collaboration are reinventing the nature of work, and how this will be very important for the global economy. And two, data. In other words, the profound impact of digital technology that stems from data and the data feedback loop.
You look at marketing: everything that's happening in marketing is digitized. Everything that's happening in finance is digitized. So pretty much every industry, every function in every industry, has a huge element that's driven by information technology. It's no longer discrete.
Believe me, my journey has not been a simple journey of progress. There have been many ups and downs, and it is the choices that I made at each of those times that have helped shape what I have achieved.
The thing I'm most focused on today is, how am I maximizing the effectiveness of the leadership team, and what am I doing to nurture it?
If you don't have a real stake in the new, then just surviving on the old - even if it is about efficiency - I don't think is a long-term game.
There were many influences on me while growing up. In the late Seventies and early Eighties when I was growing up in Hyderabad, it was a bit more laid-back, and that gave you time to think about things differently without perhaps being caught up in the narrow approach to one's journey through life.
As I spent tons of time with customers, not just in the United States, but in emerging markets, in Europe, in Latin America, top of mind for everybody is how do they drive growth for their business going forward.
Cloud is just emerging, but it's high growth.
We will reinvent productivity to empower every person and every organization on the planet to do more and achieve more.
I want the least number of decision makers. We want to empower people to get more things done and also give permission to question orthodoxy.
To me, Microsoft is about empowerment... we are the original democratizing force, putting a PC in every home and every desk.
If every sector of business and society will be driven by software - how does that get enabled? By highly-paid computer scientists funded by risk capital in Silicon Valley? Or by lots of engineers who can build it themselves?
I believe men and women should get equal pay for equal work.
We must ensure not only that everyone receives equal pay for equal work, but that they have the opportunity to do equal work.
Every opportunity I got, I took it as a learning experience.
Bottom line, we will continue to innovate and grow our fan base with Xbox while also creating additive business value for Microsoft.
I am absolutely thrilled to have the Xbox franchise.
To me, what Minecraft represents is more than a hit game franchise. It's this open-world platform. If you think about it, it's the one game parents want their kids to play.