Hit Refresh: A Memoir by Microsoft’s CEO

Hit Refresh: A Memoir by Microsoft’s CEO
Satya Nadella

Microsoft’s CEO tells the inside story of the company’s continuing transformation, while tracing his own journey from a childhood in India to leading some of the most significant changes of the digital era and offering his vision for the coming wave of intelligent technologies.Hit Refresh is about individual change, the transformation happening inside Microsoft, and the arrival of the most exciting and disruptive wave of technology humankind has experienced – including artificial intelligence, mixed reality, and quantum computing. It examines how people, organisations, and societies can and must transform, how they must ‘hit refresh’ in their persistent quest for new energy, new ideas, and continued relevance and renewal. Yet at its core, it’s about humans and how one of our essential qualities – empathy – will become ever more valuable in a world where technological advancement will alter the status quo as never before.In addition to his thoughts on these stunning scientific leaps, Satya Nadella discusses his fascinating childhood before immigrating to the U.S. and how he learned to lead along the way. He then shares his meditations as sitting CEO – one who is mostly unknown following the brainy Bill Gates and energetic Steve Ballmer. He explains how the company rediscovered its soul – transforming everything from its culture to its business partnerships to the fiercely competitive landscape of the industry itself. Nadella concludes by introducing an equation to restore digital trust, ethical design principles, and economic growth for everyone.‘Ideas excite me,’ Nadella explains. ‘Empathy grounds and centres me.’ A series of recommendations presented as algorithms, Hit Refresh is an astute contemplation of what lies ahead from a conscientious, deliberative leader searching for improvement – for himself, for a storied company, and for society.

Photo (#ulink_2a60ed38-85cf-5c51-8b5c-692db4e01a93)

On the morning of February 4, 2014, I was introduced to employees as Microsoft’s third CEO alongside Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, the only CEOs in Microsoft’s forty-year history.

Copyright (#ulink_9c9e132f-cac7-5212-8814-959803d201c2)

William Collins

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.WilliamCollinsBooks.com (http://www.WilliamCollinsBooks.com)

This eBook first published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2017

Copyright © 2017 Satya Nadella

Foreword © 2017 William H. Gates III

Cover design by Milan Bozic

Cover photograph © Microsoft

Satya Nadella asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins

Source ISBN: 9780008247652

Ebook Edition © September 2017 ISBN: 9780008247676

Version: 2018-06-27

Dedication (#ulink_fd9d525b-9337-5f4b-a7da-65f13ea24fd5)

To the two families that have shaped my life: Anu, our parents and our children; and my Microsoft family

Contents

Cover (#u0e730881-17e3-50aa-8711-6020695ce96b)

Title Page (#u12216b06-d0f4-553b-baad-7a61607288f1)

Photo (#u46b764da-755c-5f48-bb33-22113d1bdd7e)

Copyright (#u258d7a4d-7888-5a76-a8cf-2a8ff04ea9d9)

Dedication (#u20c515c3-476b-5f85-bac9-092579e7b2f6)

Foreword (#u6d4d9664-4e80-53e1-af1e-3b35afd0dcd9)

Chapter 1: From Hyderabad to Redmond (#u8394a6b9-39d0-54d5-8c4a-9faf6327daf9)

Chapter 2: Learning to Lead (#uca90b22d-f050-5986-be96-f93c51322c25)

Chapter 3: New Mission, New Momentum (#u677fa724-c5c3-50db-bb7b-f4082e6c06f0)

Chapter 4: A Cultural Renaissance (#u13f706a4-c066-5c7a-9d0d-f4384de474f8)

Chapter 5: Friends or Frenemies? (#u31a53797-bb34-58c1-a83c-6147636d887c)

Chapter 6: Beyond the Cloud (#u129bc9cc-b3df-5be6-ae54-f8bb79632cee)

Chapter 7: The Trust Equation (#u1f547eee-268b-5417-bfe3-14127467300a)

Chapter 8: The Future of Humans and Machines (#u332fd6f9-1da4-5ca1-bfe8-e1360d9c4524)

Chapter 9: Restoring Economic Growth for Everyone (#ub56a46e6-33dd-5a3f-8ab3-f74eae862b7b)

Afterword (#ua10fddf7-da69-5397-8200-f98aad9236f0)

Sources and Further Reading (#u669db6fb-c6b2-53a2-b6bc-aa3796a60642)

Index (#uf55055db-da2e-5ad6-aa24-16d7b60902c1)

Acknowledgments (#u89a79ad5-2402-54b7-8f2d-3b8c8a0e7044)

About the Author (#u9fb5c76e-a2be-5c39-8633-ee3d14f09f85)

About the Publisher (#u6d141302-aa23-528f-9683-7beec117da54)

Foreword (#ulink_bf647ca4-7ed5-54ef-a09b-0aa334983e9e)

By Bill Gates

I’ve known Satya Nadella for more than twenty years. I got to know him in the mid-nineties, when I was CEO of Microsoft and he was working on our server software, which was just taking off at the time. We took a long-term approach to building the business, which had two benefits: It gave the company another growth engine, and it fostered many of the new leaders who run Microsoft today, including Satya.

Later I worked really intensely with him when he moved over to run our efforts to build a world-class search engine. We had fallen behind Google, and our original search team had moved on. Satya was part of the group that came in to turn things around. He was humble, forward-looking, and pragmatic. He raised smart questions about our strategy. And he worked well with the hard-core engineers.

So it was no surprise to me that once Satya became Microsoft’s CEO, he immediately put his mark on the company. As the title of this book implies, he didn’t completely break with the past—when you hit refresh on your browser, some of what’s on the page stays the same. But under Satya’s leadership, Microsoft has been able to transition away from a purely Windows-centric approach. He led the adoption of a bold new mission for the company. He is part of a constant conversation, reaching out to customers, top researchers, and executives. And, most crucially, he is making big bets on a few key technologies, like artificial intelligence and cloud computing, where Microsoft will differentiate itself.

It is a smart approach not just for Microsoft, but for any company that wants to succeed in the digital age. The computing industry has never been more complex. Today lots of big companies besides Microsoft are doing innovative work—Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and others. There are cutting-edge users all around the world, not just in the United States. The PC is no longer the only computing device, or even the main one, that most users interact with.

Despite all this rapid change in the computing industry, we are still at the beginning of the digital revolution. Take artificial intelligence (AI) as an example. Think of all the time we spend manually organizing and performing mundane activities, from scheduling meetings to paying the bills. In the future, an AI agent will know that you are at work and have ten minutes free, and then help you accomplish something that is high on your to-do list. AI is on the verge of making our lives more productive and creative.

Innovation will improve many other areas of life too. It’s the biggest piece of my work with the Gates Foundation, which is focused on reducing the world’s worst inequities. Digital tracking tools and genetic sequencing are helping us get achingly close to eradicating polio, which would be just the second human disease ever wiped out. In Kenya, Tanzania, and other countries, digital money is letting low-income users save, borrow, and transfer funds like never before. In classrooms across the United States, personalized-learning software allows students to move at their own pace and zero in on the skills they most need to improve.

Of course, with every new technology, there are challenges. How do we help people whose jobs are replaced by AI agents and robots? Will users trust their AI agent with all their information? If an agent could advise you on your work style, would you want it to?

That is what makes books like Hit Refresh so valuable. Satya has charted a course for making the most of the opportunities created by technology while also facing up to the hard questions. And he offers his own fascinating personal story, more literary quotations than you might expect, and even a few lessons from his beloved game of cricket.

We should all be optimistic about what’s to come. The world is getting better, and progress is coming faster than ever. This book is a thoughtful guide to an exciting, challenging future.