A Front Row Seat to the Digital Revolution with Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith – Part 1

Redefiners

Unless you’ve somehow avoided all technology for the past three decades, you’ve likely used Microsoft products. The company has been a global technology leader since the start of the Digital Revolution and has positioned itself to grow even further as a leader in the future of computing and artificial intelligence (AI) tools like ChatGPT.
In this special two-part episode of Redefiners, we’re joined by Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith, who in his 30 years with the company has had a front row seat to not only how much the tech industry has changed, but also in how much it’s changed business and society in a relatively short timeframe. In fact, The New York Times has called this redefining leader “a de facto ambassador for the technology industry at large.”
We’ll talk with Brad about the big shifts in technology and the tech industry he’s seen over the past three decades, the critical role of government and regulation when it comes to digital technology, how to find common ground in the cybersecurity threat landscape, and how he develops systems thinking with his team to “inspect the trees” while “analyzing the forest” to identify patterns and better navigate complexity. Brad also talks about Microsoft’s commitment to sustainability, which he calls “…the issue of the decade, if not the century.” He likens where we are with sustainability now to where the United States was in 1961 after committing to go to the moon – we may not fully understand the problems we need to solve and we clearly don’t have all the answers, but it’s critical that we figure it out.
We’ll also hear from Maneesh Dube, an Executive Director in our New York office, who explains why finding leaders who are tech-savvy is crucial to the success of your organization. Be sure to check back for part two of our conversation with Brad in two weeks, where we’ll dig into artificial intelligence (AI), productivity, and his thoughts on the need for the tech sector to assume more responsibility and governments to move faster to address the challenges that new technologies are creating.
To learn more about Brad’s book, Tools and Weapons: The Promise and the Peril of the Digital Age, visit https://news.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/tools-and-weapons/. If you enjoyed this episode, you might also like these Redefiners episodes:

• Daring to Build a More Sustainable World with Kate Brandt and Sophia Mendelsohn
• Doing Well by Doing Good: Feike Sijbesma, CEO Emeritus of Royal DSM, on the Power of Bold Change
• How the Barely Possible Can Overcome the Barely Solvable with First Mode’s Chris Voorhees