Why do major employers need entrepreneurial skills?

Microsoft: A brief history FULL NARRATIVE: Where we have been? Well, lets start with the retro boxes, yes I did say boxes. Packaged in those old school boxes, were the foundations of our company, operating systems that laid the groundwork for personal computing. In the early days, Microsoft was a small startup made of two individuals. Now, we’re a multinational, $94 billion company. We have a workforce made up of 117,500 employees in 120 different countries. And, all of us are intellectually curious people with diverse backgrounds, whose love for learning has made us passionate about helping transform societies. In reality, this image highlights we never would have been able to stand here today and talk to you about where we are going, without recognizing the past 41 years of work that was started out with a mission, to put a PC on every desk in every home. But that’s not our history anymore, that’s also not our future. We have come through massive amount of change over the years, from in the box applications and OS purchased in a big box retailer, to cloud and enterprise online subscriptions you can activate from anywhere, that empowers and enables organizations around the world to provide not only economic opportunities, but human opportunities. So what do you do when your mission  and vision changed? You take your incredible workforce and change your company along with it. KEY MESSAGES: We have always been a company of curious and unique people. Our passion for learning has led to us helping societies transform and people grow. On our journey, we went from a small startup to a $94 billion company of nearly 117,500 employees in 120 countries.

Microsoft’s mission: Empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more Microsoft Mission FULL NARRATIVE: What does our history have to do with where we are going? Well it comes down to our mission statement that drives our business and our employees to empower others. It’s been a journey to actually get to this mission. We wanted to achieve simplicity, but more importantly, it answers they why, why does Microsoft exist? And it is truly a unique mission, not only did our entire leadership team carefully chose every individual word, but they believe, and our employees believe, in every single word. It’s unique because as a company, we do serve every person and every organization, that is our ambition. Not just large organizations, not just small organizations, not just developed nations, but developing nation, not just for profit organizations but non-profit organizations, not just businesses, but businesses and consumers. Let’s pause momentarily on empowering people to achieve more. When Satya came into his CEO role, he talked about this part of our mission statement as “do more” and evolved it to achieve more. In reality, many people do not want to do more, but they do want technology to help them do less. They want technology to help them in their life be more efficient and impact their own lives.   KEY MESSAGE: Our mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. I genuinely want all of you to walk away with a deeper understanding of our mission statement, why I care about it, why it is important and impactful for me, but more importantly I want you to walk away knowing that you have a lot of options, but that every company you are seriously considering working for, you as a candidate feel a part of something bigger.

We have big bold ambitions Reinventing productivity Building the intelligent cloud We have big bold ambitions FULL NARRATIVE: And our ambitions are as big as our mission. They’re based on empowering people through technology. Microsoft tools and solutions have enabled huge shifts for people and organizations. These are not simply bullet points on a slide, but true ambitions of how we think about work and collaboration at Microsoft. They’re based on a belief that being mobile means we enable people--not devices--to be mobile. We also believe that cloud technology enables the mobility that helps empower people. Within each of these three ambitions come stories of powerful technology, people from around the world, who work together to illuminate each ambition and tell the foundation of what we do and why we do it. Each of these ambitions I could speak about for some time, but am going to highlight a few of those stories for you today, but naturally, if any area is of particular interest to you, or any of you want to have a deeper conversation about any of these topics, all you need do is find me after today or any of the other Microsoft alumni, interns, or evangelist, we all have our own stories and are happy to share them with you. Transition: Let me show you our first big ambition, reinventing productivity, in action. KEY MESSAGES: We set bold ambitions for ourselves. These ambitions are based on our belief that we live in a world where being mobile means enabling a human being, not a device, to be mobile. And that cloud technology enables the mobility that helps empower people.   Creating more personal computing

We have to think about how we’re going to serve our customers over the next 40 years…… As we shift into a cloud-first, mobile-first, and customer- driven world, humility and curiosity have never been more important in the culture than they are right now. These are the traits of a growth mindset. Curiosity and humility will ensure that you’re always learning, that you’re open to ideas, and that you can feel confident to take risks and embrace challenges—no matter how many times you might fail.

“Growth Mindset” thrives on challenge and sees failure not as evidence of unintelligence but as a heartening springboard for growth and for stretching our existing abilities Even these young children conformed to the characteristics of one of the two mindsets — those with “fixed” mentality stayed on the safe side, choosing the easier puzzles that would affirm their existing ability, articulating to the researchers their belief that smart kids don’t make mistakes; those with the “growth” mindset thought it an odd choice to begin with, perplexed why anyone would want to do the same puzzle over and over if they aren’t learning anything new. In other words, the fixed-mindset kids wanted to make sure they succeeded in order to seem smart, whereas the growth-mindset ones wanted to stretch themselves, for their definition of success was about becoming smarter.

We need talent that: is curious has a desire to continuously learn and adapt has agility wants to collaborate can problem solve not afraid of failure but rather learns from it

How can students develop these skills?