Hit Refresh Book Summary - Hit Refresh Book explained in key points

Listen to the Intro

00:00

Hit Refresh summary

Name: Hit Refresh
Rating: 4.4 (93 reviews)
Author: Satya Nadella

Satya Nadella

The Quest to Rediscover Microsoft’s Soul and Imagine a Better Future for Everyone

4.4 (93 ratings)

23 mins

Table of Contents

Hit Refresh
summarized in 9 key ideas

Audio & text in the Blinkist app

Key idea 1 of 9

What’s in it for me? Discover the inspiring, true-life tale of the Indian boy who became the CEO of Microsoft.

Some words lose their meaning through overuse. “Globalization” is definitely an example of this. We generally associate this concept with abstract, large-scale processes and movements. What’s often missing, however, are the personal stories of the people who define our increasingly interconnected world.

Few biographies capture the realities of a globe-spanning life better than that of Satya Nadella. From a youth spent dreaming of cricketing stardom in the 1980s in India to his meteoric rise through the ranks of Microsoft in the US, Nadella’s story is a fascinating thumbnail sketch of the world we live in today.

But it’s also a deeply intimate portrait of a fascinating individual. As Nadella himself likes to point out, his business acumen and leadership skills are rooted in everyday life. Whether it’s on the cricket field or as a father raising a disabled son, his way of seeing things has always reflected his personal experiences.

In the following blinks, you’ll learn

what businesspeople can learn from cricketers;
why empathy is so important to leadership; and
why automation doesn’t necessarily mean a jobless future.

Nadella grew up in India, and there was little he cared more about than cricket.

Nadella was born in Hyderabad, India, in 1967. His father was a civil servant, and his mother was a scholar of Sanskrit, the ancient language of many of the country’s religious texts. As a young boy, however, Nadella wasn’t interested in politics or religion. What he really cared about was cricket.

But his parents had other ideas for him. In fact, his father even hung a poster of Karl Marx in his son’s room in the hope of inspiring him to become a great economist and intellectual. His mother responded with a poster of the Indian goddess of fortune and prosperity, which she hoped would remind him of the value of spiritual contentment. Nadella wasn’t having any of it. His favorite poster? A blown-up image of the Hyderabadi cricket star ML Jaisimha!

Nadella’s love affair with the sport gradually became a source of real concern. What, his parents wondered, would he do if his dream of becoming a professional cricketer didn’t come to anything? The answer Nadella came up with was banking. His father wasn’t happy with that either, however, and told him one day, “You’ve got to get out of Hyderabad. Otherwise, you’ll ruin yourself.”

That got Nadella thinking. At 18, he dusted off his old Sinclair ZX Spectrum personal computer – a gift his father had given him three years earlier. As he played around with the gadget, his thoughts increasingly turned to engineering, software and the great potential of personal computing. He enrolled at the Manipal Institute of Technology to study electrical engineering and graduated in 1988.

It was during his studies that Nadella’s dream of playing cricket professionally finally came to an end. At Manipal, he fell in with a group of entrepreneurial peers whose passion was positively infectious. After a single match for the Manipal college team, Nadella hung his cricketing gear up for good and decided to devote himself to a career in technology.

Swapping the warm hills of Hyderabad for the chilly plains of Wisconsin changed Nadella’s perspective on the world.

After completing his studies at Manipal, Nadella found himself at a crossroads. His two options were to either stay in his comfort zone of his native India or follow his father’s advice and move on in search of greener pastures.

Initially, the choice seemed easy. As a young man, Nadella was deeply influenced by his mother’s spiritual philosophy, which held that it was always best to do your own thing in your own time. So without any pressure to shoot for the stars, he was inclined to accept the offer he had received from a good Bombay university for a place in its master’s program.

Starting at Microsoft, Nadella set himself up for leadership.

Nadella first set foot on Microsoft’s campus in Redmond, Washington, in the fall of 1992. There was a buzz around the place. Work on Windows 95, the largest consumer technology product ever to be developed, was well underway. Bill Gates was still unknown to the wider public, but it was clear that something huge was about to happen. Nadella arrived just in time to see the project bear its first fruits.

Nadella was recruited to work on the Windows NT operating system. His job was to travel the country convincing customers – usually companies – to switch to Windows NT. While he was excited at the prospect of helping get the new system off the ground, Nadella also had other plans. He wanted to go to business school.

To successfully develop Microsoft’s cloud technologies, Nadella established an environment of trust in his team.

In January 2011, Steve Ballmer asked Nadella to take the lead on Microsoft’s new cloud technology project, “Server and Tools Business” or STB. Cloud technology was already a multi-billion dollar business by this point, but the largest slice of the pie had been gobbled up by Amazon. Nadella’s task? Reversing this and getting Microsoft into pole position. It was an incredibly ambitious project that would require excellent management skills.

But before we get to that, let’s take a closer look at cloud technology. Essentially, it’s a distributed computing system – it relies on a network of servers. That’s important because relying on a single server ends up crashing the whole system.

Cricket taught Nadella the art of leadership.

Nadella might have given up on his boyhood dreams of becoming a professional cricketer, but the game continued to inspire him during his career at Microsoft. In fact, it was cricket that taught him the three principles by which he continues to live.

Rule number one is to compete when intimidated. As a teenager playing on his school cricket team, Nadella came up against an unfamiliar team, featuring several burly Australians. As they warmed up, Nadella and his teammates watched their opponents with awe. They wondered how on earth they were going to beat them.

The birth of Nadella’s son made him a more empathetic leader.

Nadella’s son Zain was born in August 1996. His arrival changed the lives of his parents forever. Like cricket, fatherhood has taught Nadella an invaluable lesson – some of life’s problems just don’t have an easy fix.

Zain suffered from “asphyxia in utero,” an absence of oxygen in the womb that left him with lifelong disabilities. After his birth, Nadella and his wife Anu experienced months of anxious visits to intensive care units, touch-and-go surgeries and endless sleepless nights.

When he became Microsoft’s third CEO, Nadella set out to rediscover Microsoft’s soul.

On February 4, 2014, Nadella followed in the footsteps of Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer to become Microsoft’s third CEO. It was a considerable achievement, but there was a problem – the company that he was now in charge of was struggling.

Why? The consensus at the time was that Microsoft just wasn’t as innovative as it had been in the past. People were swapping their PCs for smartphones, and Android and Apple operating systems were gradually pushing Microsoft out of the market. The view within the company wasn’t any better. In fact, in the annual employees’ poll, a majority stated that they believed Microsoft was heading in the wrong direction and questioned the company’s ability to innovate.

Nadella believes there’s great value in keeping your friends close and your enemies closer.

One of Microsoft’s greatest challenges is to deal with competitors like Apple, Google and Amazon. The traditional approach would be to show no mercy in an all-out business war. But that’s not the path Nadella chose. Instead, he chose to reach out to his company’s rivals and work together. That, he believes, doesn’t just benefit Microsoft – it also benefits the world.

Nadella first offered the metaphorical peace pipe to Apple shortly after taking up his position as CEO in 2014. At an annual Salesforce marketing event, Nadella pulled an iPhone out of his pocket and began talking about its unique features. The audience was stunned. No wonder – it was the first time a Microsoft CEO had ever shown off an Apple product in this way!

A balanced approach to automation offers companies the best chance of thriving in the new economy.

People around the world are anxious about the direction the global economy seems to be moving in. Their biggest worry is the effect of new technologies on the labor market. As outsourcing and automation become ever more common, workers are increasingly concerned about the prospect of a jobless future.

The real problem, according to some experts, isn’t automation itself but the fact that there are more jobs automated out of existence than jobs being created. That’s the view of MIT economist Daron Acemoglu, a special advisor to Microsoft on economic affairs, who argues for a more balanced approach. Eliminating menial, poorly paid jobs can be a boon, but only if more rewarding, better-paid positions replace them. If those two processes aren’t in sync, however, the result is lower employment.

Want to see all full key ideas from Hit Refresh?

Key ideas in Hit Refresh

More knowledge in less time

Read or listen

Get the key ideas from nonfiction bestsellers in minutes, not hours.

Find your next read

Get book lists curated by experts and personalized recommendations.

Shortcasts ^New

We’ve teamed up with podcast creators to bring you key insights from podcasts.

What is Hit Refresh about?

Hit Refresh (2017) charts the journey of Satya Nadella, from his childhood as a cricket-obsessed boy in Hyderabad, India, to working at the very top of global tech powerhouse Microsoft. Packed full of illuminating reflections on everything from the psychology of the cricket field to what parenthood can teach us about business, these blinks provide a rare insight into the life and thoughts of one of the world’s most influential men.

Who should read Hit Refresh?

Tech-heads and computer whizzes
Business students and entrepreneurs
Anyone interested in the past, present or future of Microsoft

About the Author

Satya Nadella is an Indian-American business executive and the current CEO of Microsoft. Before taking up his current position, Nadella was in charge of Microsoft’s cloud and enterprise group. He holds three degrees from institutions in India and the US, including an MBA from the University of Chicago. He’s also a father, a husband and a keen cricketer.

Categories with Hit Refresh

Technology & the Future Management & Leadership Biography & Memoir

Books like Hit Refresh

Power Relationships

Andrew Sobel and Jerold Panas

26 Irrefutable Laws for Building Extraordinary Relationships

23 min

4.3

The Orderly Conversation

Dale Ludwig and Greg Owen-Boger

Business Presentations Redefined

Lessons in Liberty from a Hospital Diary

18 min

3.6

Tools and Weapons

Brad Smith and Carol Ann Browne

The Promise and the Peril of the Digital Age

An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones

How to Use Advanced Learning Strategies to Learn Faster, Remember More and be More Productive

The Biohacker's Guide to Getting the Body and Mind You Want

20 min

3.6

Connect

David Bradford and Carole Robin

Building Exceptional Relationships with Family, Friends and Colleagues

End Self-Sabotage and Demand Your Life Back

14 min

4.3

How to Be Your Own Therapist

Owen O'Kane

Boost Your Mood and Reduce Your Anxiety in 10 Minutes a Day

The Science and Practice of Presence

20 min

4.5

Creativity, Inc.

Ed Catmull with Amy Wallace

Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration

19 min

4.3

This Will Be My Undoing

Morgan Jerkins

Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America

14 min

4.2

Be Your Future Self Now

Dr. Benjamin Hardy

The Science of Intentional Transformation

You Are Not a To Do List

18 min

4.4

Things No One Else Can Teach Us

Humble the Poet

Turning Losses Into Lessons

A Novel about IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win

How to Fuel Success, Create Happiness, and Conquer Anything

How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

Five Steps to the Sex, Salary and Success You Want

Get Unstuck, Reclaim Your Freedom, and Build Your Empire

19 min

4.6

How to Have a Happy Hustle

Bec Evans

The Complete Guide to Making Your Ideas Happen

Why Your 20s Matter – and How to Make the Most of Them Now

We Need You to Lead Us

15 min

4.6

When Breath Becomes Air

Paul Kalanithi

Finding hope in the face of insurmountable odds

New Science Shows How to Break the Cycles of Worry and Fear to Heal Your Mind

The Science of Synchronicity and How Your Choices Shape Your World

The stoic thinking of a Philosopher-King

Surprising Lessons from the Science of Motivation

28 min

4.3

The Goal

Eliyahu M. Goldratt and Jeff Cox

A Process of Ongoing Improvement

What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else

The Science and Art of Longevity

The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom

How Ancient Wisdom Can Change Your Life

The Rise of Tribes and the End of Normal

Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock

17 min

4.1

What We Owe the Future

William MacAskill

A Guide to Ethical Living for the Fate of Our Future

21 min

4.3

The Science of Happily Ever After

Ty Tashiro

What Really Matters in the Quest for Enduring Love

An Amazing Way to Deal With Change in Your Work and in Your Life

11 min

4.4

The Tools

Phil Stutz & Barry Michels

5 Tools to Help You Find Courage, Creativity, and Willpower--and Inspire You to Live Life in Forward Motion

16 min

4.4

The Coaching Habit

Michael Bungay Stanier

Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever

13 min

4.5

Secrets of Dynamic Communication

Ken Davis

Prepare with focus, deliver with clarity, speak with power

18 min

4.0

The Man Without A Face

Masha Gessen

The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin

24 min

4.3

5 Levels of Leadership

John C. Maxwell

Proven Steps to Maximize your Potential

15 min

4.4

The Metaverse Handbook

QuHarrison Terry & Scott “DJ Skee” Keeney

Innovating for the Internet’s Next Tectonic Shift

Organizing to Compete in an Age of Disruption

The Secret to Achieving More with Less

18 min

4.4

Everybody Matters

Bob Chapman & Raj Sisodia

The Extraordinary Power of Caring for Your People Like Family

13 min

4.2

The Simplicity Principle

Julia Hobsbawm

Six Steps Towards Clarity in a Complex World

25 min

4.3

A World Without Email

Cal Newport

Reimagining Work in an Age of Communication Overload

28 min

4.4

People ❤️ Blinkist

Sven O.

It's highly addictive to get core insights on personally relevant topics without repetition or triviality. Added to that the apps ability to suggest kindred interests opens up a foundation of knowledge.

Thi Viet Quynh N.

Great app. Good selection of book summaries you can read or listen to while commuting. Instead of scrolling through your social media news feed, this is a much better way to spend your spare time in my opinion.

Jonathan A.

Life changing. The concept of being able to grasp a book's main point in such a short time truly opens multiple opportunities to grow every area of your life at a faster rate.

Renee D.

Great app. Addicting. Perfect for wait times, morning coffee, evening before bed. Extremely well written, thorough, easy to use.