PEGGY JOHNSON

Microsoft is a much bigger company than Qualcomm - a much bigger company - and there were a few days where I thought, 'I don't know if I can do this. It's huge.' My job was to come into the company and grow new businesses, and I thought, 'I'm not sure,' but it's all worked out pretty well.

I can still hear my mom's voice echoing through the house, reminding me and my siblings to 'Make your beds!' It seems like such a small thing, but when you're one of 15 brothers and sisters like me, those small reminders about the importance of discipline and order are critical.

Our smartphones can offer innovative opportunities for improving how we react to our environment, and I believe it is increasingly becoming an asset - not a hindrance - to maintaining a healthier relationship with our work, our friends, and the world around us.

Wireless is the largest information, communication, and technology platform in history, and mobile broadband is transforming how we can deliver educational materials and experiences to all students. The technology now exists to support learning on a massive scale and advance the 21st century skills needed to compete in the global economy.

Women themselves are an emerging market.

At many companies, business development is treated as a sales tool for incremental growth, but I believe that business development can bend our growth curve in a big way. It should accelerate our ability to grow, helping us quickly close gaps or leap ahead of competitors.

We all have to think about the emerging markets.

We fully recognized that our customers have a variety of devices. They're carrying all sorts of things. And we want to bring our world-class apps to those devices.

To young professionals - and particularly women - looking to advance, it is imperative to keep your life in balance.

I had to find my own terms for success, and it wasn't anything like what I was told to do.

As more and more of our world becomes part of the wireless network, I see the mobile phone becoming a central command station for everything around us.

As the world continues its love affair with smartphones and tablets, mobile has become so essential to our lives that most people couldn't imagine life without it.

I think our Acompli acquisition was an interesting one, which started with a partnership and looking at their mobile e-mail app on iOS and Android. And what I would like to highlight with that one is the speed that we actually turned that around and brought it out the door.

We're thrilled that our partnership with Adobe has now grown to span our three clouds - Microsoft Azure, Office 365, and Dynamics 365 - providing customers with the powerful integrations they need to navigate digital transformation.

Wireless technology is creating entrepreneurship on a small scale that allows a single woman to set up a business in a small village or a single farmer or fisherman to access and disseminate market information in order to get the best price for their products.

The industry trend is that everything is moving to the cloud, and most of our customers are in this very heterogeneous world.

In Indonesia, Qualcomm, in a joint project with Grameen Foundation, has provided a range of mobile phone-based services to individuals. This project facilitates the creation of businesses for those living at the bottom of the economic pyramid and, at the same time, extends telecommunication access to people who cannot afford a mobile phone.

I attended a high school with more than 4,000 students and met with a guidance counselor only once during my four-year stint. Despite my clear strengths in science and math, my counselor's advice was to pursue a degree in business. A career in engineering was never encouraged nor, in fact, ever mentioned.

Once I was able to be my more authentic self, I felt like that's when my career really took off. I was just my own voice.

A lot of companies have nice-sounding cultural values like integrity, respect, and excellence, but if those values don't map to specific behaviors, then they quickly get lost. Instead, we see what's called a 'halo effect' where leaders tend to overvalue certain attributes and undervalue others.

I spent almost 25 years at Qualcomm before joining Microsoft, so in a sense, I grew up at one company. During that time, I made a very big shift from the engineering side to the business side.

I just feel like you should be able to have a respectful work environment, because if you do, you'll be your best self.

If some day you're struggling with math, and you think, 'I don't think I can do this,' you can - you actually can. Everybody has their hard days - I definitely had mine - and you get through them, and you learn from that stumble, and then you're onto the next problem.

Acompli is just a great example of a fabulous app.

At Microsoft, we know first-hand how passionate entrepreneurs can change the world. We believe that technology can empower everyone to achieve more.