Stephen Elop: Wharton Business Technology Conference

Remarks by Stephen Elop, President of the Microsoft Business Division, about the future of technology in business.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Feb. 27, 2009

TOM ROBERTSON: OK, thank you D’laila, appreciate it. How are you all? It’s good, it’s been good. Actually, it’s pretty awful out there in so many ways, but it’s really a pleasure to have you here. We are very honored that there are so many people who are attending this wonderful conference.

This is, what is this, D’laila, the 14th or 15th, 14th Annual Conference. So this isn’t a new idea we’ve had, you know, just that we’ve sponsored for the current economic environment, and maybe we should focus on innovation. But instead the Wharton School for 14 years has been running this wonderful conference, and maybe never more appropriate than this year. I mean, it is, of course, an interesting year. We were in China last month, which is another story, and for the first time I learned that it’s a curse to say, may you live in interesting times. I thought that was a good thing, but may you live in interesting times in China is considered a curse. And these certainly are interesting times. Charles Dickens said what, it’s the best of times, the worst of times in “The Tale of Two Cities,” and I think at the moment there’s an awful lot of focus on it’s the worst of times, right, and I think it’s time to say, yes, thing are bad, and it’s time to say how do you want to take advantage of this situation.

And certainly at the Wharton School I think we’ve drawn the line in the last month or two, and we were running, teaching with our students, for a while saying, what brought the crisis about? Where are we going? We’re sort of beyond that point. And we’re now saying, how do you take advantage of this? And there’s a quote going around that was attributed first to Warren Buffett, and then to Rahm Emmanuel, and more recently  I think it actually goes back to Confucius, but it’s: “A crisis is too great an opportunity to waste.” And indeed I think it is. And so just for the Wharton School as an example, we are holding retreats with faculty to look at our program portfolio, look at our curriculum, they talk about change, and to say has the discontinuity occurred, how are we going to be responsive to this discontinuity. So we accept that things are kind of bad out there, and we’re tired of talking about that, and now it’s time to go beyond that and to say, how do we take advantage of it.

In the business school market, there’s going to be a shakeout. Schools are going to fall by the wayside, even some of our major competitors are running out of money, which is good, no – that’s bad. And so how do we very, very aggressively take advantage of the situation. And just as one example, which I think applies to industry as well, we are aggressively hiring faculty this year, and it is such a brilliant year to be hiring talented people because so many other firms or in our case business schools are not in the market. And so if you have the resources, wow, is it a great time to pick up just fantastic people like in investment banking, retailing, and you name the industry.

But let me get to technology, I think technology is so much an important part of the world economy, and technology and the day you invent it, you invent for world markets, you no longer invent for domestic markets. There are wonderful issues not only in terms of the invention of technology, but also the diffusion of technology, because there are an awful lot of great ideas out there that never diffuse, because companies can’t figure out how to come up with the right applications, or how to relate to customers, and actually get these products into the hands of customers.

We’ve had a little bit of that problem ourselves at the University of Pennsylvania, where we come up with lots of invention out of engineering and medicine, and haven’t always successfully commercialized it. Again, it goes back to applications, and of course, having the right kind of infrastructure to be able to sell the products.

So it is a matter of how do you innovate and how do you diffuse products, particularly products that have network externalities. And, again, at Wharton I think we try to embrace technology. In the last year we’ve started a new institute focused on interactive media, and really with a mission of trying to monetize, or figure out how you do monetize interactive media and gain advantage from it.

Knowledge @ Wharton, is an online information portal, now reaches 1.3 million people around the world and is very important to us. Knowledge @ Wharton has been around for 10 years. So we jumped 10 years ago from paper to an Internet-based technology for communicating lifelong learning, communicating with our alumni initially, but then it quickly went way beyond our alumni, with 84,000 alumni. But, we have 1.3 million people subscribing to Knowledge @ Wharton.

So we think it’s a fantastic conference. We think technology is so important to the recovery, which we know will occur. I guess we’ve given up any idea that it’s V-shaped and we’ll be out of this tomorrow. So, yes, it’s U-shaped, we think, and if we hit bottom in a year or two, we hope it’s not L-shaped, right, we come down and like the lost decade in Japan it will be 10 years before we recover. But I think we very much believe that in the next year or two we will  we’re going to hit bottom soon, and in the next year or two we’re coming out of this, and technology and innovation are so much a very, very important part of that.

So welcome. We hope there are a few ideas, insights, takeaways for you, as you go back to your domain in the next few weeks. And if there are, then we will have done our job, and our student organizers have done their job. And the conference sponsors, who have been so generous to us, we very much thank.

And I give it back to  I get the honor of introducing Stephen.

I was wondering why you were standing there. You’re just checking up on me, aren’t you?

So let me first of all introduce our initial keynote speaker, Stephen Elop, who joined Microsoft in January of ’08, and is a member of the Senior Leadership Team there, responsible for the company’s overall mission and strategy. He’s president of the business division, and he oversees a number of operations, including the Microsoft Office System of programs, servers, software-based services, Microsoft Dynamics applications for businesses of all sizes, and Microsoft’s Unified Communications, which provides complete software-based communication tools to business.

Before joining Microsoft Mr. Elop was COO for Juniper Networks, which as you know is a leading provider of high-performance network infrastructure, and a valued Microsoft partner, it turns out. And prior to joining that he was president of worldwide field operations at Adobe, and a position he took when that company acquired Macromedia, where he was President and CEO.

So it’s very much an honor to start the conference with someone who is so integral to the technology space, and I turn it over to you, Stephen, and give you the floor. (Applause.)

STEPHEN ELOP: Good morning. Thank you. It’s great to be here, and it’s a pleasure to participate in this conference today. Microsoft and Wharton, as it turns out, have quite a strong relationship. For example, there are over 200 Wharton grads who are employees of Microsoft, which is great. And while to date this year I think we’ve hired about nine folks from Wharton, we’re looking to hire about 15 and bring on about five as summer interns. So the whole process continues, and it’s great to have that relationship evolve over time.

Last night, actually, I had the opportunity to meet with a number of the second-year, full-time hires and prospective Microsoft employees. It was an enjoyable event, and it was fitting to have an opportunity to discuss visions for technology with this caliber of future business leaders. And as I discussed with these students, business careers, particularly today, are a long journey, and unquestionably they and all of us are in for an incredibly exciting ride, just amazing times.

And speaking of those exciting rides, it was just a couple of weeks ago that I enjoyed my first anniversary at Microsoft. I’d been there for exactly one year. And I think back on when I first joined the company, and I realized that there was one question that was asked of me over, and over, and over again. And that is, after so many years of competing with the evil empire from the Northwest, why had I decided to join Microsoft at that particular point in time, because I had time at Lotus, and Macromedia, at Adobe, I mean, companies that just fought tooth and nail with Microsoft, why would you join now?

Of course, the primary answer to that question was because of the opportunity for impact, the opportunity to impact hundreds of millions of people around the world, the opportunity to push new frontiers in our lives intersect with technology, both in work and at home. That’s why I joined when I did. And of course, it is during periods of greatest change and disruption that each of us can have the biggest impact in the environment in which we operate. Even one year ago, before the economic crisis, I believed that Microsoft and the environment in which we were operating, our industry, was going through a period of deep generational change.

When I used to talk about change, it was the known unknown that I thought about most. For example, a year ago I was thinking as I was considering joining, what will the impact be of open source software on a commercial software market, as one example. How will emerging competitors affect Microsoft, the Googles, the Apples, and so forth, how will they affect Microsoft? Is Microsoft ready to fully embrace, fully embrace cloud computing, software plus services? What does Microsoft look like with the retirement of Bill Gates? It’s a different company, what does that mean? And of course, by definition, it is more challenging to consider and plan not just for the known unknowns, but the unknown unknowns. And unquestionably the economic recession was my biggest unknown unknown.

During May of last year it really began to sink in for me, because during May Microsoft holds something called the CEO Summit, this is where leading CEOs from all over the world come to Redmond, spend three days with each other, we’re not pitching, we’re not selling Microsoft or anything, it’s just an environment for them to get together and share ideas about what’s going on in business, and technology, and a variety of other things.

What was particularly interesting is last May this conference, this CEO Summit, was held just a few weeks after the Fed and J.P. Morgan stepped in to save Bear Stearns. They avoided the collapse of Bear Stearns, which was happening in mid to late March. We were fortunate to have at the Microsoft CEO Summit some of the very people who made those decisions, who were in those conference rooms in New York and in Washington when all of that went down. So those gentlemen took the stage in front of the other CEOs, and they told us the story of what happened that weekend, how over the space of just a couple of days everyone came together and made things happen in an unprecedented way with the fear in the room that if they did not save Bear Stearns that weekend, that very day, then the financial system and the economy of this nation, and of the world, would drop into some ill-defined and very scary sound black abyss. That’s what they were worried about. And, boy, at that May conference we were so relieved that they had been there, and that they had saved all of us.

Of course, that was before Fannie, and Freddie, and AIG, and Merrill Lynch, and WaMu, and Lehman Brothers, and the automotive industry, and Citigroup, and then the automotive industry again, and Citigroup a second time. And then, of course, about 60 minutes ago, Citigroup for the third time accepting significant investments from the federal government. So it was all before so many organizations essentially tipped over in a remarkable period in our history.

So clearly I think it’s safe to say that the economy has been promoted to my list of known unknowns at this point, definitely something affecting everything we do. And, therefore, I think it’s safe to say that every person in this room has in some way changed their personal or professional plans as a result of these economic conditions. Indeed, this is a remarkable moment in history, and a remarkable moment for all businesses, including Microsoft.

Now, while there will always be uncertainty, and businesses will always be impacted by unforeseen circumstances, there are ways to anticipate the future. At Microsoft, preparing for the future is a company-wide endeavor involving research, product development, economists, marketing, and sales teams from all over the world. As part of their charter, these teams work with customers and engage with industry visionaries both inside and outside the company. Collectively, these teams are responsible for managing $9 billion every year in R&D spending. And while we must take risks to be successful, it is critical that we identify the best possible direction for making these bets at such a significant scale. Any credible technique for developing future scenarios begins by identifying and analyzing a list of really important uncertainties about the future. What are the things that are going to perturb the future, including economic, demographic, and technological trends. And I’m going to talk about each one of those three.

So let’s start and talk about economic trends. Over the past 25 years or so, the world has enjoyed incredible growth. Our CEO Steve Ballmer reinforced this message earlier this month in his remarks to the Democratic Caucus, and he talked about how much of the growth of the last 25 years has been driven through technology innovation, and globalization. But let’s be real, much of it has been driven by unsustainable levels of private debt. All of us, our parents, everybody else ,spending more than they earn. Too much money has been borrowed, and that bubble has clearly burst.

As the bright minds here at Wharton are well aware, this is not the first time that the ratio of private debt to gross domestic product has been particularly high. In 1929, before the Great Depression, the private debt to GDP ratio was 160 percent, and of course thereafter followed a great deleveraging, you can see it on the graph here, it goes up, and it came down hard. Since that deleveraging, it’s been steadily increasing again faster, and faster, and faster. So we arrive at 2008, and private sector debt as a percentage of the GDP has hit 300 percent, so why are we surprised? And yet, when you look at this graph, there is still a little bit of deleveraging, and a little bit of pain ahead. So I don’t know if it’s a U or an L, it sure isn’t a V in terms of recovery. We’ve got some tough times ahead.

As we have learned from history, there is no uniform path to economic recovery. However, businesses that take advantages of secular trends that focus on fewer bigger bets, that are agile enough to place that next step to define the future, those are the businesses that will thrive as the economy corrects. Trying economic times can lead to big opportunities for business growth and innovation. Indeed, many of today’s most prominent companies got their start during tough economic times. Procter and Gamble was founded during the Panic of 1837. IBM and General Electric came into existence during the long depression of the last quarter of the 19th Century. And, of course, Microsoft was started by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in 1975 when unemployment was hovering around 10 percent. So good things can come out of tough times. Again, the key is that there is no silver bullet for righting our economy, but one staple recovery tool throughout history has been innovation that leads to improvement in productivity.

Second, demographic and globalization trends provide essentially another of the forces that define our future. By 2012, just a few years from now when some of the students attending U-Penn enter the workforce, 10,000 people in the U.S. will turn 65 every day, every single day. And by 2050, as today’s students are approaching the traditional retirement age, more than 30 percent of the workforce will be over 65, a third of the workforce over 65, more than at any other time in the past. This fact has unknown repercussions across industries, especially healthcare and finance. People are electing, and sometimes forced to stay in the workforce longer, and this leads to something that’s quite remarkable, something that we refer to as blended generations. Blended generations in the workforce who have different values, different institutional perceptions, different conceptual frameworks, all working together under the same roof. The blending of multiple generations necessitates adaptability and new forms of collaboration.

Whereas automation and just-in-time process were the things that defined the baby-boomers, and Generation X folks, real-time collaboration across geographic boundaries is what is going to define the millennial generation, add high definition, and collaboration, non-linear workflow, highly matrixed organizations, all of those pieces together, an we can easily see the complexities of tomorrow’s workplace, the workplace that each of you will enter. Now this world of blended cultures, ages, and viewpoints is evident here today with students from more than 70 countries I understand attending Wharton. Again, innovations in the way we collaborate, process ideas, and how we organize, all of these things are the glue that will make the lifestyle of the future possible.

And, of course, the third set of trends, technological, technological trends that will play a defining role in our future. Over the last decade, our expectations for the usage of, and how we apply technology have evolved dramatically. Consider how far we’ve come in just the last decade. The Internet has gone from completely rudimentary to essential in our lives. Today’s mobile phones are as powerful as PCs from a decade ago. Social networking has certainly entered education, and is now entering the workforce. Alternative user interfaces, including tablet PCs, touch phones, voice-driven search have become more commonplace. Affordable and high quality unified communication technologies are poised to transform workplace communication, making the traditional desk phone as obsolete as a typewriter. It’s on its way out. It may be gone by the time you hit the workforce.

Despite much advancement, we still have a long, long way to go. We are presented with tremendous opportunities to improve how we interact with technology, and how we do business. We envision in the future that interacting with technology will be more like interacting with people. Voice recognition will supplant keyboards. Displays and screens will show up everywhere on every wall, every tabletop, any large surface will become an extension of your mobile device, capable of displaying information with a flip of a finger so that you can make the best use of your physical environment. These environments will make technology even more accessible, and they will unlock the potential of computation to enable individuals and communities to solve their toughest problems.

Now to successfully navigate the many uncertainties facing us in the future, businesses need to have a North Star. Even during tough times, you need to know where you’re going, and how you’re going to pull through this. At Microsoft, we have such a direction, and I believe one of the best ways to articulate this vision is to immerse ourselves in an inspirational view of what the world could look like five, 10, 15 years from now when allowing for the economic, demographic, and technological trends that I discussed earlier.

So I’m going to show you a video, a video of 10 years from now, and what we are working toward. Everything in this video is based on research and technology explorations from across Microsoft, and throughout the industry. This is not science fiction, nor is it Hollywood imagineering. Every single thing here is something that could be real, and I’ll spend more time on that after we go through the video. Watch carefully because in every frame there’s something new and advancing in terms of how technology will enable the improvement of productivity for businesses and individuals.

So now let me give you five minutes from 10 years from now.

(Video segment.)

So the future pretty interesting? I heard a few guffaws, and like “that’s not going to happen, “ in the audience. I get that. But I’m actually going to disprove that. And that’S what I’m actually going to talk about, is some of the future technological trends that actually make this possible, because all of this is within reach. So what I’d like to do is take a step back and walk through some of my favorite themes, and review some of the underlying technologies and trends that will make this vision a reality.

Now, as a relative newbie at Microsoft, something I learned early on is that it’s a required step in your introduction to the culture to do your own demonstrations and everything. So I apologize in advance, because I have multiple systems I have to talk and demonstrate at the same time. So bear with me as I go through this. Hopefully this will work well.

OK, in the first theme what we saw were children in India learning with children in Australia. Not only are these kids separated by time zones, but they speak different languages, and we saw some of the translation going on in real time, and they have different cultural backgrounds. Yet we see how they can be brought together through the power of software to explore a new world of learning.

So let’s take a look at some of the technologies we’re developing to enable this scenario. In their separate classroom environments these children are using low-cost digital camera and display technologies, combined with multi-touch surfaces to interact together from across the globe, as if they were in the same room. We’re taking some big steps in this direction.

Here you will see Bill Gates experimenting with a prototype we call Touch Wall. Underlying Touch Wall is a software exploration called Plex. Plex enables you to browse, click, zoom, pan, and jump all around in a virtual canvas to showcase concepts, charts, and videos in a more visual and dynamic fashion that is more compelling and interactive. As you may have noticed, I’m using Plex right now. That’s how this whole presentation has been brought together for you.

Now if you’d like to learn more about that visit OfficeLabs.com, which is where some of our advanced experimental activities are put forward. You can download and play with some of the related prototypes, including Plex For PowerPoint, Canvas For OneNote, and a whole bunch more.

Continuing, these kids are building things, they’re creating stories, and they’re learning together in very natural ways. And the way they’re interacting, again, very natural user interfaces, using gestures, here’s a device that helps with that that we’re working on, speech technology, and of course touch, in this case in the context of a sphere, but you’ve seen it in tables, and walls and things like that, all sorts of examples of those things happening.

So imagine, just imagine all of the wonderful applications for this technology, including the many compelling applications for the work environment, authoring and editing digital content is as easy and natural as having a conversation. When composing a document you will become more of an orchestrator than an author. You no longer need to search for facts and data to support your ideas, they will offer themselves up to you with meaningful context. That’s where we’re heading.

In the second thing we see the mother of one of the children in the classroom accessing her customized, and shared, family and work calendar. The tool she’s using is highly personalized, and also very familiar. So she feels right at home reviewing different schedule items from her daughter’s school calendar, and also from her project calendar.

And here’s another. This is one of the ones that gets the “yeah, right” comments from the audience. Recall the woman accessing her boarding pass, the underlying technology exists in prototype at Microsoft Research Labs right now. This is something I was experimenting with earlier this week, where there’s a surface on the back of a very small device, ultimately a disposable device, that is represented in terms of your actions on the screen on the top.

In addition to natural user interfaces, a host of other technologies are emerging that will enable people to work with their content in new ways. Many of these were represented in the Office scene that we saw. Looking closely at his workspace right here we see this technology providing the engineer with virtual windows, providing real time insight into his colleagues activities, who are collaborating on the same project.

Advances in flexible, transparent, and large format technologies allow that engineer to interact with information in rich and natural ways. So, yes, people are working on bendable, unbreakable, transparent displays. Those types of things are starting to become more popular.

3D transparent display is another example. All sorts of large format displays that are appropriate for big display surfaces. These are the types of things that are really beginning to happen. The displays will help that engineer bring the information into his environment, and then sensory systems will enable him to react to the information in a relevant context. You remember him moving his hand to affect what was actually happening on the screen.

Here we see a real estate developer finding his way to a meeting with the woman from the plane who has just arrived at the airport. He’s leveraging location-based services to find his way to the meeting, aided by his mobile device. Here is what he was looking at, a location-based service, to help him navigate in this case through the airport, while various services are highlighted around the outside of that.

To enable this scenario Microsoft is doing some interesting things in the area of advanced mapping and navigation. This is one of the hardest parts of the demo, finding Wharton at the same time that I talk about 3D representation. Automated image analysis software is able to construct these detailed recreations of 3D environments from a collection of 2D images. If I’ve done this correctly, Wharton, pretty amazing technology all based on 2D images.

In the near future we expect that we’ll be able to overlay navigation info on top of these types of real-time videos. So even when you’re looking at a street scene, for example, you get all sorts of additional information that helps you understand context and what’s possible.

Then, of course, there was the Pico Projection moment, this is where the real estate developer was holding that particular device. As it turns out the Pico Projector is the thing that gets the most “yeah, right,” like anyone is going to be able to navigate by pointing an arrow at the floor. Interestingly enough, Pico Projectors are something that are available today. For example, this device is something that I could use to project a PowerPoint presentation or something else on any surface. Imagine marrying this with global positioning satellite technology in a mobile device, and very quickly you can achieve what we demonstrated in that video. So these things are very much happening out there today.

So imagine, just imagine living in a world where you spend significantly less time searching for the right data, and more time actually getting things done, gaining insights from the people you’re collaborating with. Imagine getting relevant information on the go, and your mobile device guiding you to where you need to go. Information will always be contextually relevant, provided at the right time, and in the right format.

Now in many of the scenes we see the power of software and technology facilitating connections. Microsoft is innovating on a range of technologies to enable these kinds of scenarios. For example, here the structural engineer from the previous scene is meeting with colleagues from his architectural firm to review the status of the project. They are using remote collaboration software that integrates with digital recording technology, speech recognition, content management, and authoring tools.

Objects and device recognition technologies will make the sharing of content and information as simple as dragging from one device screen to another. Again, a video of a real piece of technology that’s being worked on within our labs today, device recognition in the context of a tabletop surface that allows you to draw contextually relevant information into this activity.

Microsoft research teams are also taking advantage of low-cost camera, sensor, and display technologies, enabling remote attendees to participate virtually, as if they’re present in the same room. We have multiple teams in Microsoft Research Labs around the world working on emergent technologies that will make these meetings of the future a reality.

So imagine, just imagine the meeting itself is an intelligent participant, accepting communications, monitoring resources, organizing content and managing the physical environment. You will walk into a meeting room and pick up last week’s brainstorming session right where you left off. As you sit down, meeting documents from the previous session populate your personal workspace on the table display in front of you. The wall display repopulates with notes, charts, and presentations that your coworkers are sharing. You’ll be able to quickly review highlights of the last session, and continue the discussion without missing a beat.

Now ,moving forward, in the video we see the project manager and her client, the real estate developer, meeting in a public conference space at the airport. This aligns with our vision of the future, where more and more public meeting spaces will be offering the same features we’ve come to expect from offices, seamless connectivity to corporate data and information, intuitive and easy to use displays and communication tools that are well integrated into the meeting room space.

From the video, we see how their recent communication history is displayed in the shared, secure workspace. Quickly guiding our project manager to review a critical project design change, authentication to the secure corporate data is aided by simple intuitive objects, in this case the key that the gentleman put down on the table.

To enable this scenario, we envision in the near future, software running in the cloud that will provide services that make the user experiences across the entire range of devices seamless, and secure. This cloud platform will also offer enterprises a choice of how they want to manage their own data and applications. They can host them on-premises, on their own servers, or they can have Microsoft or other companies host it for them in our state of the art data centers. In either case, the cloud platform supports open Internet standards that makes it easy to integrate with third-party data and services, regardless of where they’re hosted.

Now, towards the end of the video we see a sustainability design consultant enjoying his morning cup of coffee. Like me, this gentleman represents the baby boom generation, and like many baby boomers after his retirement he remains active in the workforce as a freelancer, taking on projects that fit his skills and interests.

Contracted by the architecture firm, he’s also working on the Green Roof project from the comfort of his home. He receives opportunities and lead notifications that fit his profile. The futuristic looking newspaper that he was holding, and scrolling through, is based on an existing concept called E-Ink. This is a non-emissive display technology, meaning that it reflects ambient light and appears just like ink on paper. It is a very low power consumption technology, and therefore it can be used for many applications, from newspapers to credit cards, and pill bottles. Since power is required only to change an image with E-Ink, and not to maintain the image, displays that use the technology can maintain its static image indefinitely without drawing on the power supply. This makes it an excellent enabler for electronic science solutions.

So imagine, just imagine, you can truly work from anywhere, from a public meeting space at the airport, or from your smart home, you remain connected to your interests at work and beyond. No matter where you are, the environment will offer everything you’d expect from your office, personalized workspaces are looking out for any projects that fit your requirements, your personal profile is a gateway to meaningful communication, information flows easily from displays to devices accommodating your preferences.

Across all of these innovation scenarios there are three core tenets that are guiding our vision. The first one is expression, and expression relates to how people create, interact, work with content. Content will be created and communicated in simple yet expressive ways, enhancing understanding and shared experiences across cultural and skill divides. The first is expression.

Second, seamless and secure connections. It relates to connections across people, content and process. All will be semantically connected, tools and services will be dynamically assembled, and access will be implicitly authenticated across teams, organizations, and networks.

Finally, contextual and anticipative insight relates to how people will derive insight from information, information will be increasingly contextually relevant, enabling search, discovery, and analysis based on user profiles and intent.

This is our vision. Our vision is to fundamentally reimagine productivity. During this time of great economic, demographic, and technological upheaval, it would be very easy to hunker down and wait for the storms to pass. But history tells us that those who hunker down risk being swept away by those very storms. Therefore, at Microsoft, we have chosen a different path, a path that intends to drive some of the greatest advances in innovation and productivity the world has yet seen. Each of you faces exactly the same decision, you can hunker down or you can step forward and show leadership through these times. For those of us who choose to lead, we will emerge from this difficult period having earned the right to define the next chapters in our history. I encourage all of you to join us in that position of leadership.

Thank you very much. (Applause.)

D’LAILA PEREIRA: Thank you, Mr. Elop.

END

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