I wrote that productivity for us goes well beyond documents, spreadsheets, and slides. We will obsess over helping people who are swimming in a growing sea of devices, apps, data, and social networks. We will build software to be more predictive, personal, and helpful. We will think about customers as “dual users,” people who use technology for their work, their school, and their personal digital life. In the email I inserted the image of a target and in its center appeared the words, “digital work and life experiences,” surrounded by our cloud platform and computer devices. Soon there will be 3 billion people connected to the Internet, sensors, and the Internet of Things (IoT). Yes, PC sales were slowing, and so we needed to convert Nietzsche’s “courage in the face of reality” into “courage in the face of opportunity.” We needed to win the billions of connected devices, not fret about a shrinking market.

With the energy of thousands of colleagues pulsing through the auditorium, I stood backstage rehearsing how I would present our new mission and the imperative to transform our culture. Microsoft people are infamous for presenting a ton of PowerPoint slides when they speak, but I don’t like to rely very much on slides or notes. So I was free to just channel what I was thinking and feeling, to let it flow. A computer on every desk and in every home, which Bill and Paul had introduced forty years earlier as the company’s mission, was actually more of a goal—an inspiring one for its era. The more I thought about it, the more I questioned what it was that had motivated us to create personal computers in the first place. What was the spirit behind the first line of code ever written for the BASIC interpreter on that primitive computer, the Altair? It was to empower people. And that was still what motivated all of our efforts: to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. We are in the empowerment business, I said as I took the stage, and not just to empower startups and tech-savvy users on the American West Coast, but everyone on the planet. Helping people and their organizations achieve more is our sweet spot. That’s what informs our decisions and inspires our passion; it’s also what makes us different from other companies. We make things that help other people make things and make things happen.

Third, we needed to move people from needing Windows to choosing Windows to loving Windows by creating more personal computing. Just as we would transform business and society through cloud computing, we also needed to revolutionize the workplace to help organizations and people be more productive. We launched Windows 10 with a new concept—to enable Windows as a service, continuously delivering value across all of our products. We engineered Windows 10 to enable innovative and more natural ways to interact and engage with devices—ask a question with your voice, draw with the flick of a pen, and secure your most important things with a smile or a touch. These experiences place users at the center so they can move seamlessly across all devices—from the PC, Xbox, phones, and Surface Hub, to Microsoft HoloLens, and Windows Mixed Reality.