Satya Nadella's book recommendations, sourced

Every line here traces to an interview, a WEF panel, or his own tweet. Not a "CEOs read these 5 books" guess.

Mindset - Carol Dweck

"the cultural meme we picked was inspired by this book" - his words, WEF panel 2020 (sourced)

Nonviolent Communication - Marshall Rosenberg

handed a copy to every exec when he became CEO, per Business Insider's reporting on the culture reset

Deep Learning - Ian Goodfellow, Yoshua Bengio, Aaron Courville

made enough of an impression that he later hired Bengio to help shape Microsoft's AI work. read the original

The Great Transformation - Karl Polanyi

"my father recommended this book long ago" - Fast Company interview

The Rise and Fall of American Growth - Robert J. Gordon

The Great Convergence - Richard Baldwin

he draws a straight line from this book to HoloLens, per that same Fast Company piece

The Narrow Corridor - Daron Acemoglu

The Boys in the Boat - Daniel James Brown

teamwork was his stated focus in year one as CEO, and he's cited this book for it more than once. he has said this twice

Tools and Weapons - Brad Smith

co-written with a Microsoft colleague, he called it important reading on tech's biggest issues, via Twitter

Competing in the Age of AI - Marco Iansiti and Karim Lakhani

AI Superpowers - Kai-Fu Lee

he called this one clear-eyed, worth it if AI-China dynamics are new to you

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