Hit Refresh: The Quest to Rediscover Microsoft's Soul and Imagine a Better Future for Everyone

by Satya Nadella

Why does Microsoft exist? And why do I exist in this new role? These are questions everyone in every organization should ask themselves.

Building Bing taught us about scale, experimentation-led design, applied ML, and auction-based pricing. These skills are not only mission critical at our company, but highly sought after throughout today’s technology universe.

I realized that in a successful company it is as important to unlearn some old habits as it is to learn new skills.

“Our industry does not respect tradition. What it respects is innovation.

“The view you adopt for yourself profoundly affects the way you lead your life.” She divides the world between learners and non-learners, demonstrating that a fixed mindset will limit you and a growth mindset can move you forward. The hand you are dealt is just the starting point. Passion, toil, and training can help you to soar.

We need to be willing to lean into uncertainty, to take risks, and to move quickly when we make mistakes, recognizing failure happens along the way to mastery.

That’s what’s needed in order to build and sustain innovation-producing and customer-pleasing products—smart partnerships.

When done right, partnering grows the pie for everyone—for customers, yes, but also for each of the partners.

In today’s era of digital transformation, every organization and every industry are potential partners.

there are four initiatives every company must make a priority.

The first is engaging their customer base by leveraging data to improve the customer experience.

if we want to convince millions of new companies around the world to bet on our platform, we need to start by earning their trust.

there are places where we can work together to add value for each other’s customers.

Trust has many other components as well—respect, listening, transparency, staying focused, and being willing to hit reset when necessary.

Over the years, I’ve found that openness is the best way to get things done and to ensure all parties feel terrific about the outcome. In a world where innovation is continuous and rapid, no one has time to waste on unnecessary cycles of work and effort. Being straightforward with one another is the best way to achieve a mutually agreeable outcome in the fastest time possible. When complications threaten to stymie the effort to build a partnership, it helps to stay focused on long-term goals.

Finally, don’t be afraid to take a pause. Even when both parties have nothing but the best intentions, things can sometimes go sideways and may even come to a standstill. Sometimes it’s critical to look at an existing relationship with a fresh set of eyes. A strategy that failed in the past might work in the future. Technology changes. The business environment changes. People change. It’s a mistake to write off any relationship as a lost cause. Tomorrow always begins with a chance to create new opportunities.

partners provide the lift we need to soar. They help us see around corners, help us locate new opportunities we might not see alone.

It is a magical feeling, at least for me, the first time you experience a profound new technology.

“If quantum mechanics hasn’t profoundly shocked you, you haven’t understood it yet,” the Danish Nobel physicist Niels Bohr once said.

Kay quips, “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”

EMPATHY—Empathy, which is so difficult to replicate in machines, will be invaluable in the human-AI world. The ability to perceive others’ thoughts and feelings, to collaborate and build relationships will be critical. If we hope to harness technology to serve human needs, we humans must lead the way by developing a deeper understanding and respect for one another’s values, cultures, emotions, and drives.

Based on this analysis, Comin agrees that differences between rich and poor nations can largely be explained by the speed at which they adopted industrial technologies. But equally important, he says, is the intensity they employ in putting new technologies to work. Even when countries that were slow to adopt new technologies eventually catch up, it’s the intensity of how they use the technology—not simply the access—that creates economic opportunity. Are the technologies just sitting there or is the workforce trained to get the most productivity out of them? That’s intensity. “The question is not just when these technologies arrive, but the intensity of their use,” Professor Comin told me.

John Batelle, Wired’s co–founding editor, once wrote that “Business is humanity’s most resilient, iterative, and productive mechanism for creating change in the world.”