It seems everywhere I turn lately I hear stories of re-invention or destruction. Last week, I talked about Pitney Bowes morphing from a stamp machine company to a cross-channel, cross-border retail Omnichannel technology enabler. This week, I’m here to talk about Microsoft.

I had the opportunity to hear CEO Satya Nadella speak at a cross-industry event in New York City, named “Business Forward. ” The theme of his speech was digital transformation, but I also witnessed a specific company’s transformation: Microsoft’s.

I never saw the prior CEO Steve Ballmer speak live, but certain videos of him have become legend. The last years of his reign saw Microsoft miss opportunities (mobile phones and tablets), lose market share to Apple in the personal computing space, and release head scratching versions of Windows software.

Somehow, soft-spoken Nadella (about as behaviorally far from Mr. Ballmer as you can get) has really turned the ship around. The stock market and everyday people have taken notice. I don’t know if he has changed the Microsoft Mission statement or simply re-articulated it in a voice I could hear, but the statement is straightforward:

Microsoft’s Mission: Empower every person and organization on the planet to achieve more.

Or as Mr. Nadella said, “the only thing worth celebrating is the success you have with their technology. The technology itself is nothing. ” Those are some big words and are wise ones. In fact, I wish more vendors understood the importance of being part of a “Winning ” strategy, rather than just a sales strategy.

Key to digital transformation in his view is what he called “Systems of Intelligence. ” These systems of intelligence enable four critical opportunities:

• Engage customers
• Empower employees
• Optimize operations
• Transform your products

Another core tenet Mr. Nadella espoused was the ability of an organization to reason without being bound to any one application. That implies recognition of a certain reality: we live in a world of disparate system implementations. And even as we may choose to move towards a more homogeneous environment, we have to keep our retail ships afloat and transform our businesses while we also deliver results.

Moving on to the subject of retail, I wrote a piece in Forbes last week that leveraged a conversation Greg Buzek and I had at the Pitney-Bowes conference, along with data Greg had previously presented. The title was simple enough: “Five Reasons Why The Retail Apocalypse Is A Scare Story. ”

Well, I might have been giving water to thirsty souls: the thing went pretty viral on LinkedIn, and has received more views than anything I’ve written in a while. I got lots more views on the Target data breach a couple of years ago, but that was read by laymen….shoppers. This was mostly read by retailers and their technology providers.

When retail sales increase by 4.2% year over year in a quarter, how does that look like an “apocalypse? “ Of course it doesn’t. It also doesn’t mean we’re off the hook. Digital transformation is a real thing. And it applies to retail stores as much as it does to any other industry. Shoppers need a reason to come back to stores. We have an opportunity to make it happen, but we (the industry) have to change. The in-store experience has to be SOMETHING. Ask yourselves…is YOUR retail store anything? Does it pop? Or is all you’re offering the “lowest price ” which you know someone else is going to beat in a day or two.

One helpful commenter on my article said “Well, you can do better, Paula. If Scott Galloway says it’s all going on-line, and Walter Loeb says it’s all going on line, you’re obviously wrong. ” Well, Paula says (sorry – after 50 years in the business, I think I’ve got some cred myself) opportunity remains, and I think if you talked to Walter (a good friend), he’d likely say the same in a specific context. I don’t know Scott, so I can’t say what he’d say, except we’d probably have a good time out-potty-mouthing each other.

We got here for a reason.

As part of the run-up to RSR’s 10^th anniversary, Nikki asked us to take a look at our favorite articles from 2007 and perhaps re-purpose and extend them. I trolled through, and most of my articles were about how God-awful customer service was in stores. You’ll see one or more in our June 13 newsletter, but for now, I’ll say what I said in the Forbes piece. Retailer problems have been building for decades. Certainly I can testify that the store issues have been building for the ten years RSR has been in business.

I call that the “Walmart effect, ” a drive to operational efficiency gone horribly awry.

Now we’re experiencing the “Amazon effect, ” the reasonable and rational push to better customer service, and the irrational fear that the store is dying. We have too many stores in the US. It has been so forever. More will close. But stores remain real, and relevant, and they have a future. We just have to participate in the digital transformation.

And so the theme remains: reinvention and digital transformation: for Microsoft, for Pitney Bowes, and for retailers. We’re in a new century now, and a new era. It’s exciting. Change is hard, but it’s good. And rewards are there for those who embrace it.