Author | Satya Nadella |
---|---|
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Genre | Nonfiction |
Publisher | HarperCollins |
Publication date | 2017 |
Media type | Print (hardback and ebook) |
ISBN | 978-0062652508 (hardback) |
Hit Refresh: The Quest to Rediscover Microsoft's Soul and Imagine a Better Future for Everyone is a nonfiction book by Satya Nadella and co-authors Jill Tracie Nichols and Greg Shaw, with a foreword by Bill Gates, published in 2017. Nadella announced that the profits from the book would go to Microsoft Philanthropies and through that to nonprofit organizations. [1]
Hit Refresh entered the New York Times Bestseller List in the nonfiction category at #5 [2] and reached #4. [3] A special annotated version of the book was given to each Microsoft employee. [4]
In Hit Refresh, Nadella interweaves his story of growing up in India and moving to the United States, his experiences at Microsoft before becoming CEO, and his ideas for changing the corporate culture. He often illustrates his statements with anecdotes about cricket and the challenges he has personally faced with his son's medical problems. Nadella includes three areas of future interest for Microsoft: artificial intelligence (AI), quantum computing, and mixed reality.
Forbes said "Hit Refresh is optimistic about ways that tech will augment humans, grow the number of mid-tech jobs, and lead to social surplus." [5] The Register described the book as "a sanitised rather than revelatory account of change at Microsoft". [6] The reviewer at the Star Tribune notes "He is cautious in his storytelling but does delve into some of the decisionmaking, including buying Minecraft and repairing the company’s relationship with Samsung." [7] The Washington Post characterizes it as "Part memoir, part leadership guide, part futurist vision of technology". [8] Publishers Weekly says "Unpretentious and stirring, this well-written book provides surprising and welcome insights into a corporate giant." [9] Kirkus Reviews says Hit Refresh is a "valuable blueprint for techies and others in a culture-change state of mind". [10]
Steven Anthony Ballmer is an American businessman and investor who served as the chief executive officer of Microsoft from 2000 to 2014. He is the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers of the National Basketball Association (NBA). As of February 2023, Bloomberg Billionaires Index estimates his personal wealth at around $90 billion, making him the eighth-richest person on Earth.
John Wendell Thompson is an American technology executive who was the chair of Microsoft from 2014 until June 2021, and chair of Illumina since 2021. He is a former chief executive of Virtual Instruments, a vice-president at IBM and the former chief executive of Symantec. Thompson later became an independent director on the board of Microsoft, and in February 2014, was named chairman. He led the search for Microsoft's next CEO; as a result, Satya Nadella was selected.
The Hyderabad Public School, Begumpet is a privately funded public school in Hyderabad, Telangana, India. The school has grades from pre-primary to the 12th. The school is affiliated with the Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations and is managed by the Hyderabad Public School Society and the Board of Governors.
B. Kevin Turner is an American businessman and investor who is currently the chairman of Zayo Group and the vice chairman of Albertsons/Safeway Inc. From 2016 to 2017, he was the vice chairman of Citadel LLC and CEO of Citadel Securities. Prior to joining Citadel LLC, Turner served as the COO of Microsoft from 2005 to 2016. Turner came to Microsoft from Walmart in 2005. During his nearly 20 years at Walmart, Turner rose through the ranks from a store cashier to eventually becoming the company's global CIO and later CEO of Sam's Club, a $37 billion division of Walmart.
Pichai Sundararajan, better known as Sundar Pichai, is an Indian-American business executive. He is the chief executive officer (CEO) of Alphabet Inc. and its subsidiary Google.
Brian Christian is an American non-fiction author, poet, programmer and researcher, best known for a bestselling series of books about the human implications of computer science, including The Most Human Human (2011), Algorithms to Live By (2016), and The Alignment Problem (2020).
The National Book Award for Nonfiction is one of five U.S. annual National Book Awards, which are given by the National Book Foundation to recognize outstanding literary work by U.S. citizens. They are awards "by writers to writers". The panelists are five "writers who are known to be doing great work in their genre or field".
The Business Council is an organization of business leaders headquartered in Washington, D.C. It holds meetings several times a year for high-level policy discussions.
Satya Narayana Nadella is an Indian-American business executive. He is the executive chairman and CEO of Microsoft, succeeding Steve Ballmer in 2014 as CEO and John W. Thompson in 2021 as chairman. Before becoming CEO, he was the executive vice president of Microsoft's cloud and enterprise group, responsible for building and running the company's computing platforms.
Emmanuel "Manu" Cornet is a French programmer, cartoonist, writer and musician. Born in Paris, he studied at the École alsacienne and at the École normale supérieure. Cornet worked at Google from 2007 until 2021.
Terry Myerson is an American venture partner at Madrona Venture Group and an operating executive at The Carlyle Group. Myerson was previously an Executive Vice President at Microsoft, and head of its Windows and Devices Group.
Phil Spencer is an American business executive and the CEO of Microsoft Gaming. He is currently the head of the Xbox brand and leads the global creative and engineering teams responsible for gaming at Microsoft.
Windows Mixed Reality is a platform introduced as part of the Windows 10 and 11 operating system, which provides augmented reality and virtual reality experiences with compatible head-mounted displays.
Panos Costa Panay is an American business executive. He is the chief product officer of Microsoft, where he oversees the company's Windows and Devices division. He oversees the development of Surface products and related hardware, along with the Windows client operating system.
Prabhat Ranjan is a Hindi novelist, fiction writer, and translator. He is currently professor of Hindi at Zakir Husain Delhi College in the University of Delhi, Delhi. He runs an online literary website Jankipul.com since 10 years.
Kathleen Hogan is Executive Vice President for human resources and Chief People Officer at Microsoft.
Microsoft Kaizala is a secure messaging and work management software application for collaboration among users inside and outside of organizations, including the ability to send and receive instant messages, coordinate tasks, and submit invoices. It was launched in India in 2017, thereafter expanded to 28 countries, and was launched globally in April 2019 as part of the Office 365 package. It is available internationally, except in a few countries as a free Android, iOS, and web application. Kai zala is a Marathi phrase that means "What happened?"
Microsoft, a technology company historically known for its opposition to the open source software paradigm, turned to embrace the approach in the 2010s. From the 1970s through 2000s under CEOs Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, Microsoft viewed the community creation and sharing of communal code, later to be known as free and open source software, as a threat to its business, and both executives spoke negatively against it. In the 2010s, as the industry turned towards cloud, embedded, and mobile computing—technologies powered by open source advances—CEO Satya Nadella led Microsoft towards open source adoption although Microsoft's traditional Windows business continued to grow throughout this period generating revenues of 26.8 billion in the third quarter of 2018, while Microsoft's Azure cloud revenues nearly doubled.
Nadella is a surname found primarily among Telugu-speaking Brahmin community of Andhra Pradesh.
The Alignment Problem: Machine Learning and Human Values is a 2020 non-fiction book by the American writer Brian Christian. It is based on numerous interviews with experts trying to build artificial intelligence systems, particular machine learning systems, that are aligned with human values.