Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella used to come to Bangkok from India in the 1960s and 1970s for holidays with his parents. Last week, Nadella, now 49 and running one of the world's most powerful IT companies, returned to Thailand to speak at the event "Techonology For Good".
Empowering people and organisations in Thailand to achieve more for society is a key mission of his company, said the CEO. "Technology For Good" was attended by representatives from 50 leading NGOs, and Nadella reiterated that Microsoft would donate US$1 billion (36 billion baht) in cloud services to social contributions around the world. In Thailand, Microsoft has donated more than US$2 million in the form of free software, provided training to 430 NGOs, and helped communities fulfil unmet needs while equipping non-profit organisations with the necessary tools.
Nadella noted in his speech that technology is not an end, but a means to the goal. Technology in the hands of people, he said, transforms itself into something better that can outlast people. "That's why I like the fundamental notion of empowerment. We seek not technology for technology's sake; we see technology that -- in the hands of people, with the ingenuity of the people -- can really change the societies and economies of the world," he said.
The Indian-born American CEO raised the example of a couple developers who built an application to help Bangkok's disabled find facilities for the handicapped.
"Think about what it has meant for any disabled person to be able to find the restrooms or the restaurants that have accessibility. That itself is life-changing."
One Thai non-profit working with Microsoft is the Population and Community Development Association (PDA), founded by well-known social entrepreneur Mechai Viravaidya. PDA operates the Mechai Pattana School in Buri Ram, a self-sufficiency school sometimes known as Bamboo School.
Nadella had a chance to meet and talk to some of the girls from the school, who told him that they used technology to help them learn English and improve their ability to find employment. But what he found very striking was they all want to go back to the rural communities they've come from.
"I fundamentally think that what has to happen is economic opportunity, and with it all the necessary infrastructure, including technology, has to be further democratised. It can't be just the urban centres, because one of the great phenomena of economic opportunity and surplus creation has been urbanisation the world over ... But we also have to crack in this next phase of economic growth what it means to take economic opportunity to people where they are, versus them having the need to migrate."
According to Mechai, founder of PDA, schools should be lifelong learning centres, and should help with development throughout the country. "There are over 30,000 schools in the country, and if we can get that principle in, with technology, it will change the whole system. We need to make some changes by training young students to become teachers. The Thai teachers are very short on computer or IT knowledge, so younger kids would become very good teachers [if they have more training] on IT. We can send a lot of smart kids from schools to universities to become IT teachers, and they can work with Microsoft partners and find employment in the future," said Mechai.
Nadella seems to share this idea. He told the audience about one of the biggest moments of clarity for him. He was in Kenya last summer, and had a chance to go to the rural north of the capital, Nairobi. He met a student in an Internet cafe who was on a PC and working away, and he asked the man what he was doing. "And he said: 'I'm doing physics.' And I thought to myself: 'Oh, maybe he's a student studying physics," Nadella recalls. "I said: 'So is this some kind of distance learning? And he said: 'No, no, no, I am actually solving physics problems.' And I said: 'Oh, so who are you solving physics problems for?,' thinking maybe some others in the village. He says: "I'm teaching physics to European kids here in rural Kenya.'
"And that's when I decided that economic opportunity has no boundaries now. It's a trivial example, perhaps, but it's the kind of employment creation, economic-opportunity creation, that I think we'll have to strive for."
Technology has made a tremendous contribution to prosperity for Thailand and Asia, he said, especially now that the digital revolution is taking place in every country and society. Nadella pointed out that cloud computing has made it possible for the very smallest business in Thailand to have the productivity tools that even five years ago were only possible for a very large Western company.
"My hope is that Thailand, because of the ingenuity of the people here and the opportunities of this Fourth Industrial Revolution, achieves better economic growth in the future."
Nadella also talked about his experience growing up and being educated in India before moving on to study electrical engineering and business in the US, eventually working his way through the ranks at Microsoft. Bangkok also holds a very special place in his biography: he got his first microcomputer here. Back in the 70s, his dad, a civil servant, bought the machine in Singapore and gave it to him in Bangkok during a trip here. That's how he became interested in computing in the eighth or ninth grade.
The CEO pointed that Thailand has a big market, with 65 million people, and the country has spent a lot on education. What it's coming down to, he said, is how Thailand is going to translate this core platform into more economic opportunity. He stressed that one of the modern challenges in the developed world as well as in the developing world the inequity that comes with the progress of technological breakthroughs.
"[That is] what every society, every economy in the world, will have to deal with, because if it's not something that we address in a very systematic way, it will lead to the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. And that's not going to end well, because ultimately that will lead to less economic growth even for the rich."
Microsoft early this year announced at Davos that they'll donate US$1 billion to more than 75,000 not-for-profit and research organisations over the next three years, so they can have cloud computing, artificial intelligence, machine learning, productivity and communication tools.
These are all means to an end, with these technologies making fundamental changes.
Satya Nadella greets students from the Mechai Pattana School in Buri Ram, the school under the Population and Community Development Association (PDA).
