If we would change the basis and align what is taught in school with what is needed with business... that's where I came up with this idea of 'new collar.' Not blue collar or white collar.

Watson augments human decision-making because it isn't governed by human boundaries. It draws together all this information and forms hypotheses, millions of them, and then tests them with all the data it can find. It learns over time what data is reliable, and that's part of its learning process.

Everyone talks about how much data's in the world. Except, actually, 80% of it is pretty blind to computers. I mean, it can store it. But if it's a movie, a poem, a song, it doesn't know what it's actually saying or doing.

If you ask me, 'So what is your business model?' Our business model's always about shifting to higher value opportunities.

Digital, it is not the destination.

As I say to our own team: 'Never protect your past, never define yourself by a single product, and always continue to steward for the long-term. Keep moving towards the future.'

I'm the kid that tried to take Latin in school because I felt if I could understand the root of everything, then I could understand why it worked. That was what took me into engineering. And the reason I stayed is, engineering teaches you to solve problems. It teaches you to think.

I have a great job at a great company.

When you manage your company for long-term shareholders, and you manage the company for clients, two of the biggest stakeholders, you will make the right decisions.

What has always made IBM a fascinating and compelling place for me is the passion of the company, and its people, to apply technology and scientific thinking to major societal issues.

No matter what it is, you put too much, your heart and soul in it, you have to be passionate about it. You make too many sacrifices.

We should prepare our future workforce differently. It isn't just advanced STEM degrees. There are many jobs you can do without advanced degrees.

As I tell all our folks, the only reason we exist - make no mistake - is our clients.

So what it means is when you don't believe in the inevitable, it means you don't expect that that's how things have to turn out. You can change them.

I ask everyone's opinion when they don't speak up. And then when they have an opinion, I'll ask others to talk about it.

IBM's long-standing mantra is 'Think.' What has always made IBM a fascinating and compelling place for me, is the passion of the company, and its people, to apply technology and scientific thinking to major societal issues.

I've made lots of mistakes. Probably the worst one - I would say they tie. It's either when I didn't move fast enough on something, or I didn't take a big enough risk.

And the reason I came to IBM was I think - I always say at a really early age, I learned you've got to be passionate about what you do. No matter what it is, you put too much, your heart and soul in it, you have to be passionate about it. You make too many sacrifices.

If it's digital, it will be cognitive. If you think that, you're going to change the way you run a business.

India will not be at the center - it will be the center of this fourth technology shift.

One of the most important topics I think for us all to work on is job creation.

You make the right decision for the long run. You manage for the long run, and you continue to move to higher value. That's what I think my job is.

The recommendation when I'm mentoring folks, I always tell them - and we talked about this last year - take a risk.

Whatever business you're in - it doesn't matter - it's going to commoditize over time. It's going to devalue. You've got to keep moving it to a higher value.

We have started something called the Corporate Services Corps. Now, it was modeled after the Peace Corps from long ago, the 1960s. And the idea was in this modern day and age, how do you get IBM'ers around the world to be global citizens? You know, globally aware, contribute, understand how to work in that environment, but do it on scale.

If you're clear on what you believe, you have a great foundation to go make a market.

And so when I moved to IBM, I moved because I thought I could apply technology. I didn't actually have to do my engineer - I was an electrical engineer, but I could apply it. And that was when I changed. And when I got there, though, I have to say, at the time, I really never felt there was a constraint about being a woman. I really did not.

I've been head of strategy at IBM and together with my colleagues built our five-year plan. My priorities are going to be to continue to execute on that.

I think 'Actions speak louder than words' is one thing, I think, I always took from my mom. And to this day, I think about that in everything I do.

To me, I learned along the way, you know, culture is behavior. That's all it is; culture is people's behaviors.

I always say, you know, if I sit here and close my eyes and say, 'When did I learn the most in my life, in my career?' It'll always be when I close them and everything I think of is when I took a risk. It's when I think I learned the most.

Clients say, 'What's your strategy,' and I say, 'Ask me what I believe first.' That's a far more enduring answer.

When you remove layers, simplicity and speed happen.

I make time to exercise. It's not being indulgent. I think it's got a lot to do with your ability to manage properly and stay focused. There's no doubt about that.

I think, particularly in our tech industry, this is an industry that has violent innovation and then commoditization, and it's a cycle of innovation/commoditization.

I've got a distribution system that goes to 170 countries. If I acquire properly, you know, you may be successful in one or two countries, or one place; I can scale, and that's part of the value that IBM brings.

Every part of your business will change based on what I consider predictive analytics of the future.

I think, given who the IBM target company is, I feel our purpose is to be essential to our clients.

You define yourself by either what your clients want or what you believe they'll need for the future. So: Define yourself by your client, not your competitor.

It's easy to have an act one and two. Go ahead and have an act three, four, and five. The saying is the easy part. The doing is the hard part.

Don't protect your past. Don't protect your products.

I don't think anybody's just B2B or B2C anymore. You are B2I - business to individual.

What I knew was I liked math and science, and I never wanted to memorize everything. I wanted to understand where it came from.

IBM existed a good 50 years before mainframes - we started with scales.

I am very practical.

My mom had not worked a day in her life, and then she woke up when I was 15 and found herself with four children, no job, no money. But she set out and made it all OK for us, and from that, I saw that there's no problem that can't be solved.

You need to have a great support around you, people that empathise, understand and yet support, because these CEO jobs are all-consuming.

The amazing thing about IBM is that it's a company where I have had 10 different careers - local jobs, global jobs, technology jobs, industry jobs, financial services, insurance, start-ups, big scale. The network of talent around you is phenomenal.

If you step back and look at technology from every era, it has displaced jobs but also created a lot of jobs.

One day we're going to look back, and whatever this era will get called, it's going to put a premium on math and science.