- It's lunchtime, and this is Brad Anderson's Lunch Break. (bouncy music) Here in Redmond, we're visited by some of the smartest people on the planet. Pretty much every day. Every chance I get, I meet up with them for lunch. (bouncy music) Today I'm meeting up with Microsoft veteran and industry icon, Kurt DelBene, Executive Vice President of Strategy and Operations at Microsoft. (jazzy piano) okay, now tell me about you coming to Microsoft. - Yeah? - 1991, 1992. - Yeah. - This was early days Microsoft. I worked for a woman named Karen Hargrove, at the time, in this advanced technology group. And what we were doing at the time was putting a version of Windows into fax machines, copiers, phones, literally had to install. - (laughing) The original embedded. - Yeah, the story I remember most from there was, you know, I did the analytic things, what's the market telling us, etc., and I presented all of this to Nathan Myhrvold, the CTO at the time-- - Oh yeah, I remember Nathan. - Who was my boss's boss, and I said, "You know, Nathan, it seems that people don't want "a fax machine with a touchscreen on it. "They just wanna hit 10 digits and hit send." And his response was, well at Microsoft, we don't look at market research, we just know. - (laughing) Contrast that now-- - Yeah, contrast that deeply now. We have learned, we have come a long way since those points, just night and day in terms of that, you know. There's not that arrogance of, you know, we know all the answers, let us just tell you the answers. It's about, you know, we think we have, we believe we know the answers, let's talk to you and figure out how the technology works for you, what can you tell us about where it doesn't fit. - So you started in 1991, you left for a few years as you went and worked on healthcare.gov, and you came back. What's the difference you saw in Microsoft from when you left till you came back? - Oh I think it's night and day. I think one, Satya's driving a culture where it's about the customer, it's about learning what we need to learn, it's about adapting over a period of time. When he talks about the growth mindset, he actually, he really means that. - [Brad] Oh yeah, he embodies it. - You know, the other thing is the bets that we made, we started making ten years ago, they're really coming into their fold, so you know, Office 365, we used to see Google a bunch in terms of, you know, what are enterprise customers considering Google or not, we don't see that as much any more because the value proposition is so strong with 365-- - It's just the default. - Yeah, it is. I hate to ever say it's just the default, but it is the first, it's absolutely the thing that people would think of, and then, the stitching together of those. Like what does it mean if I'm on Office 365 and now I wanna move my estate to the Cloud? What, you know, things like the Office Graph, working against the LinkedIn Graph, being able to do ML against in the Cloud, those scenarios are really popular. - [Brad] I tell you, we are so happy you're back. - Well, thank you, I'm happy to be back. - All right, it's good to see you, Kurt. - Thanks, Brad. - All right, let's make sure we do this more regularly. - All right, see you later. - All right, bye. - Next time on Brad Anderson's Lunch Break-- - Part of what we try to do at Premera, and how we leverage technology is to solve those four issues. - I did a search on LinkedIn and there were multiple Mark Gregory's that I found. - Right. - So let's play, which one are you. - Okay. (laughing) - Back in the early 2000, did you own a small chain of pizza restaurants in Alaska? - [Mark] I did not. - Did you have a role in the movie Adam and Eve Meet the Cannibals? - Oh, man, no. I wish I did though! Didn't that sound like the greatest script? - No, seriously, right? (bouncy music)
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