 here's your host Jeff Frick. Hi Jeff Frick here with the Q. We are on the ground at the R&B building. It's the headquarters of Intel Santa Clara California and we're actually in the Intel museum which I've never been to before. If you get a chance stop by there's a lot of great things back to the first memory that looks like it was hand sewn, early microprocessors, computers, all kinds of fun stuff and we're really excited to be joined by our next guest Kim Stephenson the VP and CIO of Intel. Welcome Kim. Last we saw you was at Oracle Open World I think. I can't believe it's almost been a year. So you've been keeping busy. Things are hopping down here and we're joined here by your leadership group and I think it's really interesting. We just had a nice conversation with Leslie Berlin about Robert Noyce and really about kind of culture and the culture that he had, the culture that he built with Andy and with Craig and Intel has a very specific and very defined culture defined by really strict meeting rules and regulations which anyone who's been here knows, constructive confrontation. There's a very distinctive Intel culture about that culture and how it enables Intel to kick out really great microprocessors and a whole host of other products but to continue to grow as a company and to continue to change in this very dynamic marketplace. Yeah so it's interesting because people talk about founder DNA and so you know we're you know 48 year old this company now they're still founder DNA in fact you walk into this building and there's Robert Noyce's famous quote don't be encumbered by history go off and do something wonderful and every Intel employee today still embraces that it's it's very much a part of our culture and how we drive the company but you know history repeats itself in modern ways too so the strict meeting thing you know we do a lot of meetings at Intel but they're global they're diverse you know people are working from a customer location a home at their office you know wherever it might be there's a lot more flexibility to map to the modern needs of the workforce so founder DNA is still there and stuff and then the changes needed to succeed in today's environment complement that and add on to that. Yeah I guess I just always remember the stories of Andy being outside at 8 that's what they teach you when you first show up you know meetings here start at 8 and they start on time and they start with an agenda and and you think about it really from the manufacturing point of view I mean making microprocessors is a very specific and intense technological process the bunny suits are not just for fun they're because you can't have a bunch of particulates and contaminates in those fab so it's interesting how it kind of grows out of that manufacturing because now when people think of Silicon Valley they think more of usually software and more kind of the software defined world but under the covers right even with cloud it cloud means somebody else's computer there's a there's a computer there somewhere and a lot of them running on x86 technology. Yeah it's so look you know you took you look at corporate values and the values that we embrace at Intel and certainly results orientation is one of them so that's the discipline in the activities it takes to drive to the results and then customer orientation is the other one you know we're trying to invent things that make a difference in the world right so where we can bring and if you think about it Intel has probably touched every human on earth with the core of their technology they know that through PCs as we move into the future of Internet of Things and even quantum computing it may not be as obvious that this wearable bracelet that I have on watch today that's an Intel product right so so there'll be many manifestations of of how we impact the world but it's still true that you know the core of what Intel does brings smart and connected devices to every person right and continues to to morph how that's done down more with data centers to support cloud applications because some stuff still on the device some stuff's done in the cloud and as you said Internet of Things is coming in a big big way we just talked to Bill Rue a GE a couple weeks ago he talked about you know it's great to work at GE and at Intel because we work on really big really big problems that impact a lot of people in a major way and that's pretty special opportunity. Yeah it's it's you know they're peace parts that people talk about but if you think about everything is a system what you see is that the advances in data and analytics that allow for rapid insight development through machine learning and deep learning kinds of algorithms to the ability to collect data through Internet of Things devices and provide real-time feedback it's fundamentally changing every industry so you get to you know what is a normal fitness device becomes in the future a connected care device to manage you know chronic illness throughout the world to change the outcomes of patients that suffer from health issues and so you know these things start as pieces and then they move into these fully connected systems and that's kind of the next what I'll call explosive wave of computing and it goes up and down the stack from you know very small embedded chips and things to you know phones and tablets and servers and you know massive super computing right power right and then there's delivering that to your customers and then there's integrating all this this new stuff internally big data analytics you know being on top of your own systems things in the cloud you talked about a changing culture when now people don't have to be in the meeting rooms upstairs they can join from wherever the remote location is you you're well known as a really super innovative CIO you get a ton of demands on your time not just necessarily to keep the lights on and run this company but also to tell other people about some of the innovation that you're up to how does what you're up to and kind of running the internal systems map to the external innovation that Intel is delivering within the pros products and and services that they're delivering to the in customers yeah well I have the pleasure of leading a very very talented IT organization and the innovation and the thought leadership that this team brings to Intel is amazing and and we add value we certainly keep the lights on I mean you know operational discipline no company can run today without an outstanding fundamental operational team in IT and and that's an important role but it's it's necessary but not sufficient and so we look for opportunities based on the business strategy of Intel that bring greater value to Intel and you'll see that we we have worked on a project for a couple years and keep adding pieces to it up it's an advanced analytic predictive modeling based on machine learning that takes a lot of external data associated with market sales of our products so we make things that go inside things that get sold to the customer so try to end that understand the end product and then bring that back to manage our channel and how we take our route to market for a particular product and what we've been able to do through those types of machine learning algorithms is drive three hundred and fifty one million dollars of revenue last year for Intel and one more time three hundred and fifty one million that's a big number that's a lot of it's a lot of revenue and it but it's it's critically important because what's happening is our product portfolio is diversifying is expanding as computing expands what we sell expand right and so you have different channel partners you have different needs different market segments and so understanding the performance of those market segments to be able to relate to that customer need in a different fashion is what the machine learning algorithms allow us to do right that we couldn't do before maybe one really great sales guy that newest customer could do it that you would get this wide variation in performance where the really superstar would perform and then everybody else and if you put machine learning to it and you take what a human can know and put that intelligence into an algorithm that allows that to be distributed across a wider population and then you get improved operational performance right now I'm teasing you because you know we do a lot of shows and it's that's always the conversation right can the CIO get a seat at the business table and go from yes we have to keep the lights on and keep all that stuff is didn't go away but can we deliver more value add and you know you're kind of a personification of actually executing with a lot of people are trying to achieve striving to achieve thinking about achieving starting to plan but you're really executing here on a day-by-day basis yeah well and I'll tell you it starts with you have to understand why you exist right and I do believe we we exist for three reasons and that's you know we do have to run the run the operations of the company allow the company to operate so that's you know and we do that you get to move up to creating this business value through understanding and collaborating with the business unit but then ultimately you're looking to do things that the business units inside your company think are impossible now through because most companies most companies are not made up with people who really understand technology so who in the company would that be that would be the IT organization and so the IT organization then has a responsibility to bring the transformative notions of what IT can bring to the company to the marketing of the company to the operational discipline of manufacturing to you know whatever to how to recruit and retain where is the best talent in the world right technology can help you solve those problems and but IT's by understanding it needs to bring those ideas and that's the seat at the table right right but they're they're the transformative nature of where the company is going what problems do you need to solve for the company and then how might technology help right and that then leads to industry leadership right because I actually believe that will define if that operating model works well and the company executes to that that will define what in every segment what industry leadership is and who will lead right or get left behind or get left do it and get out in front or you know the view in the back of the dog pack never changes on the dog sled the pace of change is I know people say this all the time but it is phenomenal you know even even I look back at some of the things that I was working on a year before and how I thought about things and how how much more advanced those thoughts are in just one year right right and so it is a profession that is ever learning and you have to you have to be able to stay up on that but like I said you know you have to also have the context of history so that you know some of the barriers that you're going to encounter and how do you get ahead of those so that you can remove those before they actually slow you down so let me ask you a nitty gritty question that that I love to ask people because we go to all these conferences right where the spark summit sparks the hottest thing in big data and then and then we're a cloud and you know there's there's just so many technologies coming at you I always like to say it's kind of like you know driving through a snowstorm at night with your headlights on you know it's just like big data and there's open source projects how do you how do you make sense of it on one hand you want to keep you want to keep a finger on the pulse there's something you need to be involved with you need to know about it on the other hand you know if you reacted to every single thing that came your way it would be it would be just paralysis by by analysis I mean there's just too many things how do you kind of balance that how do you keep an eye on the future to see what things you need to see so that you don't miss but at the same time not get completely blown away by just way too many new technologies coming in so look it's I always say the shiny toy problem right shiny toy and we do some cool things as technologists especially in this area in this industry but it really comes back to staying focused on what problems the company needs solved and some of those are hard multi-year problems and you have to allow for some experimentation in that area some of them are practical it's just practical innovation you've got to just stay focused and do the work you do have to know what kind of problem you're solving not just what the problem is right and then you know apply the right kind of resources you know some people are better at the day-to-day execution some people are better at you know really wallowing in those tough complex challenges that no one's ever solved before and we're fortunate here that you know we have a lot of people that are really want to solve some of the problems that haven't been solved before we have a brand-new data center just across the courtyard here that has one of the world's largest supercomputers and certainly the largest in a public enterprise national laboratories have ranked above us but that was designed to solve you know a particular problems that we believe we will face in you know as we move from 14 nanometer to 10 nanometer to 7 nanometer technology and so you know we're constantly thinking about three five ten years out and what problems do we have to solve and that's a different skill than the day-to-day right right so that gives me running out of time kind of the last question and you teed it up nicely talk about you know the role of diversity obviously you're a woman in tech and we featured you before and we love to feature you and other great women CIO specifically but it's not just women right it's diversity it's kind of different points of view you know how are you both appreciating it and and how is Intel kind of actively promoting the the ability to get different points of view because they're really puts a different lens on problem-solving you know you'll see things that you may be never saw before we just interviewed a guy from Etna who said you know she's always put the same person on the same job that person was no longer available she gave to somebody else and they said why are we doing it this way we could do it a completely different way never even never even a thought to do that so how are you guys executing that practically as well as it kind of institutionally yeah so philosophically right it is it exactly what you said that diversity of thought and perspective leads to better outcomes and so gender diversity is a piece of its skill diversity experience diversity cultural diversity all those things play play in we made a bold declaration at the beginning of 2015 at the consumer electronics show that we would be at market parity for diversity by 2020 and we just released I believe it was either early August late July our very first mid-year diversity report so so part of our philosophy is make bold goals but very consistent with more law make bold goals figure out then how to solve them so we made the bold goal the beginning of the year right now we're starting to work it but show your progress and we've made great progress and there are areas that we're falling short too it's it's it's not all perfect but by exposing that getting more people involved in the dialogue guess what happened so we open up to the ecosystem help us build a pipeline of tech and then we get thousands of ideas submitting in to what we could do what kinds of programs we could run with universities that's led to a partnership with Oakland City Schools right that starts you know children very young to try to stay in tech we can't think of all those ideas what we can do is inspire community to help bring that to bear and that requires bold goals with transparency and reporting and so so we're really pleased with with the progress I can you know say that we're committed to follow through not I'm sure we will run into challenges like everyone else has but the overwhelming support that we have from our employees in the broader technology community has been phenomenal it's inspiring other companies to do similar things which you know then you get a movement it's not an initiative by a one company it's a movement that then takes over so we're pretty excited about progress and so and I can say for you know personally I see no limitations for me and and if I can get you know every diverse person in the world to say I see no limitations for me I think we will have accomplished our goal well that's a that's a perfect close here at at R&B the Robert noise building at the Intel Museum where you're surrounded but I'm still mystified by how any of the stuff works it's it's amazing when you look at these microprocessors that you know what they can accomplish so it is all about having bold goals and going forward so Kim thanks for taking a few minutes out of your busy day absolutely my pleasure some Jeff Rick with Kim Stevenson we're at Intel headquarters R&B building at the Intel Museum thanks for watching we'll see you next time