Hit Refresh by Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO, is not only a peak at the future of technology, but also is a remarkably insightful road-map of how to invent our future. Hit refresh is something we do to renew a page or site on the computer. This is something he is attempting to achieve over time by reinventing the culture at Microsoft. The book is considered one of the best business books to come along in a long time, yet is readable for a layman like me.
One area I’d like to quote: “E+SV=T/t or Empathy+Shared Values+Safety and Reliability=Trust over time….Notice the first term in my equation for trust is Empathy. Whether you are a company designing a product or a lawmaker designing a policy, you must start by empathizing with people and their needs. No product or policy works if it fails to reflect and honor the lives and realities of people……Next, if we hope to build a lasting foundation of trust between a company and its customers or partners…we need to have shared values…Have we prioritized safety and reliability and ensured that those whose lives we touch can count on experiencing those qualities day in and day out?”
So as we rapidly approach a world of robots, virtual reality and quantum computing I hope that we have more humanistic leaders in the tech world like Nadella. This book gives us hope that technology, with its forces of both good and evil, will have some wise guiding hands.