Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer speaks at Microsoft's 'Citizenship Accelerator Summit' with employees Tom Moran and Rajesh Munshi behind him.

Microsoft held a "Citizenship Accelerator Summit" at its headquarters yesterday, bringing in executives (including CEO Steve Ballmer) and global nonprofit leaders to talk about how technology can tackle social challenges around the world -- citing, as Exhibit A, its own business and philanthropic partnerships in areas including the environment, energy, disaster relief, worker retraining and the fight against child pornography.

Invited to sit in were reporters from national newspapers, magazines and wire services, as well as some influential university professors, social entrepreneurs and philanthropic bloggers. Complete with the obligatory Twitter hash tag, the event was an implicit (and at one point surprisingly explicit) attempt to spread the word about a different side of the Redmond software giant.

In fact, the company was almost too effective in getting that message across. After listening to some impressive Microsoft employees talk about their nonprofit ventures -- launched with the support of the company's matching program and the endorsement of the Microsoft culture -- one attendee asked how the company makes sure its people don't spend too much time focusing on things other than, um, you know, the software business?

Microsoft executives said that has never been a problem. But as evidenced by the question, the summit was practically enough to make a person forget the other Microsoft -- the one fighting for its life, or at least its profits, against Google, Apple and dozens of unknown companies being hatched in garages and dorm rooms.

I chimed in by pointing out that, for better or worse, this doesn't seem like the same culture that made Microsoft such an industry force in decades past.

Some longtime Microsoft executives in the room disagreed with me, noting that the legendary stories about dunks in "Lake Bill" were celebrations of the company's early philanthropic initiatives, a precursor to the massive and sophisticated charitable giving campaign it operates today. Microsoft's philanthropic legacy traces its roots in part to the role of Bill Gates' mom, Mary, as president of the local United Way.

History aside, what I was really getting at was this: Can Microsoft change the world and conquer it at the same time?

That's a simplistic and naive question, posed by a guy who spends his days covering the tech business, not philanthropy. And while this may be obvious to people further down the path to enlightenment -- or at least more involved in social entrepreneurialism -- the interesting thing to me is that Microsoft executives are saying that yes, in fact, they're increasingly seeing an intersection of the company's business and social interests.

Bill Gates calls it "creative capitalism," a phrase that has apparently taken hold enough to warrant its own Wikipedia entry.

By training unemployed workers in its software, for example, Microsoft is theoretically helping them get better jobs while cementing the role of its technology in the workplace. By working with non-governmental agencies, the company ends up on the front lines of tech trends in developing nations.

Hany Farid, a Dartmouth College forensic computer scientist who worked with Microsoft on PhotoDNA (being used by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children) explained that the underlying technology for identifying photos could be used separately to improve general image search engines.

In general, the trick is to figure out ways to make social responsibility economically sustainable, said Brad Smith, Microsoft general counsel, speaking at the summit. "Getting that right is good for our society, and it is smart for our business," he said.

Speaking to the group later in the day, Ballmer referred to the company's former mission statement of putting a computer on every desk in every home.

"As we sit here today in 2010 ... there's no less potential, no less opportunity today to make a fundamental impact in a wide swath of society's issues through the power of information and software," he said. "So we're excited to have a chance to go work on that."

OK, that's about as much do-gooding as I can take. Is there any room left in this brave new world for some good old-fashioned competitive trash-talking? Fortunately for us hard-bitten traditionalists, the answer is apparently yes.

Toward the end of the day, one of the university professors in the conference room asked the panel of Microsoft employees if they would take into account the company's support of their nonprofit ventures in deciding whether to remain at Microsoft if they were ever offered a job by a certain company in Cupertino.

Yes, they said, they would. Of course, with high-ranking Microsoft executives looking on, that response wasn't exactly a surprise.

But that was when Lisa Brummel, the company's senior vice president of human resources, said she wanted to extend the question to Mountain View, as well.

"There are certain companies that give their employees 20 percent time to spend internally to make that company better," Brummel said. "And there are some companies that give their employees 20 percent time externally to make the world better."

OK, so it's not exactly a call to arms, and to be clear, Google obviously is on board with this whole concept of mixing technology and societal change. But these days that statement may be as close as we get to hearing a response from Microsoft to Google's own Wikipedia-worthy catch phrase.