To avoid being trapped by the innovator’s dilemma—and to move from always focusing on the urgency of today to considering the important things for tomorrow—we decided to look at our investment strategy across three growth horizons: first, grow today’s core businesses and technologies; second, incubate new ideas and products for the future; and third, invest in long-term breakthroughs. On horizon one, our customers and partners will continue to see quarter-by-quarter, year-by-year innovations in all of our businesses. On horizon two, we’re already investing in some exciting nearer-term platform shifts, such as new user interfaces with speech or digital ink, new applications with personal assistants and bots, and Internet of Things experiences for everything from factories to cars to home appliances. On horizon three, Microsoft is highly focused in areas that only a few years ago sounded distant, but today are frontiers of innovation—mixed reality, artificial intelligence, and quantum computing. Mixed reality will become an essential tool in medicine, education, and manufacturing. AI will help forecast crises like the Zika epidemic and help us focus our time and attention on things that matter most. Quantum computing will give us the computational power to cure cancer and effectively address global warming.

His quest, however, was to find a place where he could design software for the sake of software, a place that treated software as an art form. He came to Microsoft where he would play a role in designing Windows Vista, the long-awaited successor to Windows XP. When Vista received lukewarm reviews despite its advanced features, no one was more disappointed than Alex. He took it personally and returned to Brazil to reflect—to hit refresh on his own career outlook. Alex is very philosophical and turned to Nietzsche for direction: “He who has a ‘why’ to live for can bear almost any ‘how.’” Alex was upset with himself because he did not yet have his “why,” a point of view about where computing should be headed.

But excessive inequality has the perverse effect of reducing incentives for many people. What happens when people work more and yet make less money? It is discouraging, leading many people to slacken their efforts, abandon dreams of launching or expanding businesses, and perhaps to leave the workforce altogether. It also weakens overall economic activity. For businesses like mine, it means our global customers have less to spend on emerging technologies that could make them more productive. That is what’s happening today. There is a sagging line below Gini’s perfect 45-degree angle that represents growing inequality. I want to avoid the pitfalls of what Marx described as late-stage capitalism—a theoretical time when economic growth and profits collapse—and get back to the returns enjoyed in early stage capitalism. But how? That’s the question most heads of state around the world are also grappling with.

One of the reasons I was so excited about our acquisition of LinkedIn—the talent and employment-oriented social networking service—was a shared commitment we discovered early in our negotiations. In conversations with LinkedIn’s founder, Reid Hoffman, and its CEO, Jeff Weiner, I discovered we had a common desire to use our digital platforms to spread opportunity more equitably to everyone. In fact, The New Yorker magazine has written about LinkedIn’s vision of making labor markets work better for all 3 billion members of the global workforce by making those markets more efficient and open.

John Batelle, Wired’s co–founding editor, once wrote that “Business is humanity’s most resilient, iterative, and productive mechanism for creating change in the world.” He is right—and we business leaders need to take seriously our responsibilities as change leaders. I don’t say this for purposes of so-called corporate social responsibility, which is important but can also serve as little more than good PR. I say it because a better world is better for business. It’s important to be dedicated to creating great products, serving customers, and earning profits for our investors—but it’s not sufficient. We also need to think about the impact of our actions on the world and its citizens long into the future.