Innovation is often the hidden thing, because we can't put numbers to it. And yet it's the thing that defines the way we live, the things we'd like to have for everyone whether it's health or education.

Microsoft went into orbit because it had a booster rocket attached to it called IBM.

Programs today get very fat; the enhancements tend to slow the program down because people put in special checks. When they want to add some feature, they’ll just stick in these checks without thinking about how they might slow the thing down.

I considered law and math. My Dad was a lawyer. I think though I would have ended up in physics if I didn't end up in computer science.

...one of the most inventive forms of creative capitalism involves someone we all know very well. A few years ago, I was sitting in a bar here in Davos with Bono. Late at night, after a few drinks, he was on fire, talking about how we could get a percentage of each purchase from civic-minded companies to help change the world. He kept calling people, waking them up, and handing me the phone to show me the interest.

It's fantastic that Microsoft in the cloud space is one of very few companies that's got the critical mass, the particular emphasis on helping business customers get up to that cloud with all the unique requirements they have. It's very exciting.

If somebody is working on a new medicine, computer science helps us model those things. We have a whole group here in Seattle called the Institute for Disease Modelling that is a mix of computer science and math-type people, and the progress we're making in polio or plans for malaria or really driven by their deep insights.