If you are going to have a risk-taking culture, you can't really look at every failure as a failure, you've got to be able to look at the failure as a learning opportunity.

This notion of universal Windows apps is a very powerful concept because we're now aggregating the 300-plus-million-socket run rate of Windows into one opportunity for our developers.

Technologies will come and go, so you need to be able to both ask and answer the question: What do you do as a company, why do you exist?

Many companies aspire to change the world. But very few have all the elements required: talent, resources and perseverance. Microsoft has proven that it has all three in abundance.

Our mission of empowering every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more is really a look back to the very creation of Microsoft.

One of the key things in the tech business in particular is that you need to be able to push boundaries.

Be passionate and bold. Always keep learning. You stop doing useful things if you don't learn.