107 - Democratizing data, thinking backwards and setting North Star goals with Dr. Donald Kossmann

Dr. Donald Kossmann is a Distinguished Scientist who thinks big, and as the Director of Microsoft Research’s flagship lab in Redmond, it’s his job to inspire others to think big, too. But don’t be fooled. For him, thinking big involves what he calls thinking backwards, a framework of imagining the future, defining progress in reverse order and executing against landmarks along an uncertain path. On today’s podcast, Dr. Kossmann reflects on his life as a database researcher and tells us how Socrates, an innovative database-as-a-service architecture, is re-envisioning traditional database design. He also reveals the five superpowers of Microsoft Research and how we can improve science… with marketing. https://www.microsoft.com/research