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.