 That is going to happen in the fourth industrial revolution is data and digital technology is the new factor of production. Whether you're in retail, whether you're in healthcare, whether you're in insurance, any sector of our economy, any walk of our lives is going to be driven by digital and data. So I think just like electricity was democratized, it was available, it fueled economic growth and productivity growth in the previous industrial revolution, the same thing needs to happen with data. So for example, at Microsoft as a platform company, I actually think of my job and our company's identity is to not create a dependence on Microsoft. If anything, we want to partner with companies in every country in every region so that they can create independence for themselves in an era of digital technology. Of course, that also means that each of us has to operate as companies in the tech sector, but interestingly enough, what is the tech sector? The world is a tech sector. So in some sense, every health company, every retail company going forward also will need to think of data and really make sure that we all adhere to the core principle of data as a human right and privacy as a human right. And that's at least the world I envision. Do you see at the moment that the privacy is sufficiently protected or is there still a long way to go? I think that we have the right start. If you even think about the change in the last year with GDPR, there is a complete new realization of how important it is for all of us to really say that we have to start from the core principle that the user is in control of their data. They are the owners of the data. If ever a company like us should be a custodian of the data that is earned by the trust of the user, so that to me is the transformation. We're in the very beginning phase of understanding it, but interestingly enough, it's just not the tech sector who needs to understand it. Everyone across the economy needs to understand that. And so it's different behavior in the tech sector at the moment. That's actually a good one because in some sense if you look at it right, you know, all of us, somebody explained this to me, you know, we're all defined by our business models. There are, even there is no such thing as the tech sector. Even in the tech companies, we come in two different flavors. There are people who are like us primarily focused on providing technology and creating technology so that others can create more technology. That's what I describe as the platform company. In fact, it's called the Bill Gates line, which is in a true platform company really has the following attribute, which is you build a platform. There is more surplus, more value that is created above the platform. That's what defines a platform company and non-platform companies, which are also, you know, have a place under the sun. They're more aggregator businesses. So the fact that we lump what are aggregation businesses and platform businesses and give them the same sobriquet of a platform company. I think we need to now start really separating these two out. Satya, you were one of the first partners of our center for the first industrial revolution. The idea behind this actually is that the traditional ways of setting standards and to create ethical rules. Governments creating frameworks and afterwards businesses following it don't work anymore. You need permanent exchange cooperation. But governments have sometimes difficulties to understand what's really going on. What would you recommend to make sure that governments move out of this always too late zone? It's a tough issue because in some sense, I start from the point of view that it's so important to have institutions that govern us. Because it's not that we can somehow do away with what governments have always done. What we have had as even global norms are so important. But at the same time, I think we as individual companies, to your point, cannot advocate our responsibilities. So take even something that we recently called for around facial recognition. Facial recognition is a piece of technology. It's just going to be democratized. It's going to be prevalent. I can come up with 10 cases which are very virtuous and important that can improve human life. I can come up with 10 issues that are going to cause real challenges. So one of the things that I feel today is in the marketplace there's competition. There is no discrimination between the right use and the wrong use of facial recognition. So we as company, for example, at Microsoft, we've said we are going to have a set of principles that we will use to both build it and make sure that there's fair and robust use of this technology and not any of the unintended consequences. So I'll call it self-regulation. But at the same time, we will also welcome any regulation that helps the marketplace not be a race to the bottom. Because if you turn it just to private enterprise, what happens in many times is that we will have a race to the bottom and then we will have to come back and deal with the bad consequences with even more heavy-handed regulatory regimes and so on. So that understanding is what I think or the sophistication is what's required. One attempt to go into this direction is the European approach of GDPR. Now some people say it's already outdated. Some people say it should become a norm on a global level. What is your opinion? My view on GDPR is forever we're always going to have this issue, which is anything that is a norm today or a standard today. We'll have to continuously evolve as technology evolves. But that said, my own point of view on GDPR is it's a fantastic start on really treating privacy as a human right. I am hopeful that even in the United States we will have something that is along the same lines. In fact I would hope that the world over we all converge on a common standard because one of the things we do not want to do is to fragment the world and increase transaction costs because ultimately it's going to be born in our economic figures. So therefore I hope that we really come together. United States and Europe first in China. All the three regions will have to come together and set a global standard because that's what's going to help. By the way, most people think of this as some conflict between regions. It's not. In a digital world, of course every country should put their country's interests. Every region should put their interests first. But the digital world will help all of us grow if we realize that it's a connected world to start with. Now if we take, we look at the black box algorithm as some people say of artificial intelligence or machine learning. When we do not know really what the result is coming out, how do we ensure that the result is ethical? Because it's, the norms is one issue but let's say ethical rules is the other issue. I mean this is, first of all again, just like in privacy there are certain principles. I actually start in AI by saying as creators of AI we need to have some principles that govern AI. We have in our own case, we have said okay when I trace back even at Microsoft's history 20 years ago we started the journey of saying how do we build software that's secure by design, right? We have to really do a lot of re-engineering of our processes, teaching of our own engineers on what does it mean to do threat modeling in software so that we build more robust software. Same thing with AI. We have to have design principles. What does it mean to have fairness? What does it mean to have robustness? Take something that you create. How do you know that the use case for which it's being used you've actually got robustness in it? Privacy and security. How do we make sure that there's accountability? But one of the things is there's even a state of the art challenge in AI which is, as you described it, sometimes there's a black box because it's being trained by data. It's not being programmed. In other words, the programs are being written by data. But there are new approaches coming out of research. For example, there's this entire field of counterfactual reasoning of what the black box does. And that's the, for example, I would say something like that will be used for say if somebody is making a decision on whom to give a loan or not a loan there are actual laws and rules around it so that there's no bias. So there will be breakthroughs in AI that help us explain the back blocks so that ethically and regulatory wise we can control it. But if we take, let's say, Essex and we look at the world, we have not only today a, we have a multipolar world, but we have also a multi-conceptual world. So Essex which come out of cultural backgrounds may differ in different regions of the world. Just look at China and the US. How do we, you are a global company. How do you accommodate in a world of different cultures and different, I would say, even ethical principles? I mean it's a, I would say this is kind of one of the things that we say is not as if we all got up in 2019 and discovered the complexity of the world. This has happened throughout our sort of history that the world has been complicated. If anything sometimes I think in the digital world we have made naive assumptions that there is uniformity and not recognizing I think the legitimate needs people have for their cultural identities, their different approaches, their different priorities. So at least the way I look at it, Professor Shraab, is that we as an industry and we as a world need to recognize both the need for diversity but at the same time some global norms on key things that we are prioritizing. In fact if you think about the last phase of globalization which today we criticize for certain impacts it has had. The one thing it did achieve was some real rules and frameworks and global norms. We clearly understand that there were some challenges too so therefore this next phase of globalization should not be let's return to a world where there are no global norms but there needs to be a revised list of global norms realizing that there are real differences. So we are moving into a new phase of globalization, globalization 4.0. What would you see as the distinctive elements of this globalization 4.0 compared to the globalization we had until now? In fact you've written very eloquently in your book about this and quite frankly the thing that I've come to recognize is when I look at the world the last 50 years we've grown at around 3.5 points across the globe. Then any projection at least I see for the next 50 years people say it's going to be a challenge to even grow at the rate at which we were growing. But I'm an optimist because I believe these breakthroughs we just talked about can absolutely help the world grow at that rate if not faster. That Robert Gordon thing where he talks about the 1870 to 1940 period can probably be brought back maybe in 2020 to 2050, 2070. But what will have to be the challenge that we will need to face in globalization 4.0 is that this can't be just economic growth and productivity growth but we need real inclusive growth. It's easy to say but tough to do because for example we may have economic growth and productivity growth and a decoupling with wages and jobs. I think one of the key initiatives that I'm glad we are discussing as a first class issue even in this year's forum is to say what does it mean to have the social structures the political structures and the economic structures that support more inclusive growth in every region. The other thing that I've also come to realize is every country is going to put their country's interest first. They should. No country should be hollowed out in the middle and so therefore if every country puts its interest first guess what we live in one globe. So ultimately we will have to come back and find the global maxima because the climate is shared resources are shared trade whatever the issues in the short term it is not going to go away. That is what has led to economic growth. So I think this globalization 4.0 I've kind of come to the conclusion local action for equity will lead to a global maxima in economic growth and equity. I formulated in such way we have to keep an open multilateral world but at the same time we have to put much more emphasis on national social coherence because that provides a stability of democracy of society and so on. Now if I look at Microsoft I think you not only the world is transforming and we need a new concept for this transformation which is globalization 4.0 and I just would say it should not only be more equitable more sustainable but I think it should and that's the purpose of our meeting here. It should also bring out so that's the end we all despite differences share principal values. But let me come to another point when I look at Microsoft Microsoft was considered to be a supplier of software. Now I would describe your strategy as a catalyst for digitalization. Do you see that every company has to become a digital platform or how do what is your advice to the business leaders here who are not platform companies. It's fascinating. One of the things that is super exciting for me even the meetings I've been having with a variety of partners of ours at the forum even is to see how this democratic force of digital technology is becoming part of companies everywhere. Here we are in Switzerland. Bueller is a local company that we worked with and it's involved in food production. In fact 90% of the world's corn goes through these Bueller machines and guess what they are using the cutting edge computer vision technology to find the toxins in the world's corn production before it shows up in sort of food in the shelves of the supermarket. That's the use of digital technology to create their own platform. I was reading recently about how Anna was a Bush worked with Microsoft to create their own platform for barley. So even agriculture which is the oldest industry that we know of is being transformed as we speak using digital technology and they themselves are building their own platforms. So I absolutely think whether it's BMW or whether it is the Bush whether it's Bueller they're all totally in control of their own destiny using this new factor of production. So that's I think by the way for me so important. I describe it as tech intensity. For example one of the things that I believe in the fourth industrial revolution is in fact if I sort of slightly digress there's this economist out of Dartmouth who did a longitudinal study of diffusion of technology in the previous industrial revolutions and the simple formula they found was that if you have a country that takes the best innovation brings it into their country and then builds on it new innovation then that's how countries can prosper and companies can prosper and that's what I see happening. So one way to take up what you just said is to seize a platform of each company as an integrator not only to provide a product but to provide social value. Is this correct? That's correct because if you think about it none of us live in isolation. In fact I'll sort of make this comment which comes back to the social value right? Just two weeks ago Microsoft as a very successful company in the Seattle region realized that we have benefited immensely from what is happening in Seattle and we said okay but at the same time Seattle has a challenge in housing and so what we've done is we've taken essentially what we have is a strong balance sheet and put it to work to create low income and middle income housing in Seattle so that people who work inside of Microsoft are not all software engineers. We also have people who work at Microsoft who work in our cafeteria who provide us services in our shuttles they all work with us, they're proximate with us they should live with us and so we said okay we need to be able to create the housing that they need so that they don't have the commute burden. So I bring that up mostly to explain that look all of us need a thriving society to have a thriving economy because without it there is no way we can somehow grow economically without really a society that works. One yesterday in a different discussion I participated one stumbling block in order to go into this direction is the fact that companies employ let's say MBAs and specialists but actually if you want to go into this direction of creating a platform for also providing social value because that's what will be required from each company in the future you need to hire more sociologists and so on do you do it at Microsoft? In fact it's a fallacy to think that successful tech products are only created because we employ just the technologies and in fact what is technology and it's really interesting today any team at Microsoft whether it's on our cloud platform or on Xbox will have the following composition it'll have designers and designers can come from sociology, anthropology and design but a variety of different fields design is a first class I would call a function of product creation data science data science itself also people can come from many different mathematical backgrounds we of course have to have product managers who are business people who understand customers and scenarios and then we have software engineers and hardware engineers and so on so it's really a multidisciplinary world whether it's a banking product whether it's a healthcare product or what is considered a pure digital product it in fact requires the social sciences and the STEM sciences to come together to create I think the modern society so it's an appeal to all of the businesses really to integrate as much diversity into the workforce as possible that's I think what you are doing right I mean and that's the key and in fact one of the things that we have sort of said look the business case for diversity is as straightforward as it ever was but it's time to act and for me it's sort of if you want to take our mission empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more that's who we are at our core there's no way we're going to achieve that without representing the world so that means diversity when it comes to gender diversity when it comes to ethnicity diversity when it comes to skills all of this is what's I think required in our organizations but one of the key things you brought up is it's not just having the representation it is how is the culture of your organization your institution going to help people who come from diverse backgrounds do their very best work and that's where the real challenge of inclusion comes in and that's hard work but it's got to be the everyday lived experience that you strive for I have we are coming towards an end of our session I have two questions one is if you look at the ten foremost platform companies they are either American or Chinese what would you tell the European politicians and business leaders how to catch up I mean it's a I grew up in fact in Microsoft at the same time that SAP for example was becoming a very large company out of Europe and we partnered very deeply I remember distinctly even the first couple of meetings that Hasso and Bill would have we were building our first database product and obviously client server was just being born and SAP was creating R3 and it was magical at some level we both were able to co-innovate and create this new world I think if we sort of started with the aperture that this tech industry has measured by these ten companies American and Chinese I think the wrong way to think about it I think that we should start thinking about what is the comparative advantage of Europe take the industrial base in Switzerland and Germany my partnerships with all the companies that I work with in the auto industry or in robotics and many other pharma companies out of here are all becoming digital companies they are all becoming digital platform companies they all will prosper in the fourth industrial revolution so instead of narrowly viewing what is digital but really going back to the comparative advantage that has always existed in the different parts of the world this applies to Asia, it applies to Africa, it applies to Europe that we all can in fact build value add that ultimately helps the world drive economic growth so you could say it's like electricity you are delivering electricity but what really counts is what people afterwards do that is exactly correct and one of the great advantages in 2019 versus even say the industrial revolutions of the past is technology that is developed in any part of the world very quickly gets diffused to all parts of the world so we don't have to have I would call it industrial competition or country over country competition of the previous decades and the previous centuries inform how regions work and regions prosper I think that's where we are trying to use too much of our history to project forward I don't think 100 years from now we are going to be sitting around and talking about our regional differences we are going to be talking about what is that global cooperation that is required in order to solve our pressing challenges I would just what you said if we look in 100 years from now maybe in 50 years from now when we are at the maybe in transition to the 50th industrial revolution do you think some robots will sit here and we'll discuss what they will do in the future with human beings here is my take on it my take on it is you and I may not be alive but that said if we were sitting here we would have more superpowers because of computing being embedded in our world and I hope that one of the things that we will have as human beings is more capacity for the most human qualities in us which is empathy for the other human beings so I hope that that's the future as opposed to us being replaced by robots that's a very great ending and I would say it provided us with a great insight into a company and it shows that the leader of this company has not only his business in mind but is socially engaged and a true visionary and thank you very much for this unique opportunity and for having a discussion with you and I would thank you and I'm personally by the way I'm not making promotions the proceeds go to the World Economic Forum but I had the pleasure to write this book on it's the second book after having conceptualized the forced-industrial revolution and here I describe how shaping the forced-industrial revolution how it should be remain human-centered and I'm very proud that Satya Nadella wrote the foreword and so I head over this book for him to him for Satya Nadella a pioneer of the forced-industrial revolution with admiration and service Thank you so much