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August 20, 2018 05:30 pm

'This is Not Your Father's Microsoft': CEO Satya Nadella On Helping a Faded Legend Find a 'Sense of Purpose'

News outlet CNET has two big stories on Microsoft today. The publication interviewed CEO Satya Nadella on the changes he has made since taking the top job. The stories, among other things, talks about Microsoft Hackathon, the diversity pushes Nadella has made at the company, and how Microsoft lost the touch with what made it successful, and how Nadella is trying to fix that. From story one: Nadella dreamed up the Microsoft Hackathon, which the company calls the "largest private hackathon in the world," when he became CEO in February 2014. Just a few of the thousands of projects pitched over the past five years have inspired mainstream products. Most of these let's-change-the-world ideas aren't the kind of business tech that Microsoft makes the bulk of its money on -- at least not today. That's just fine with Nadella, because the meetup serves another purpose: rebranding Microsoft as a modern, relevant company. When he became the third CEO of the world's largest software company, after Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, Nadella made changing Microsoft's rigid, hierarchical and arrogant culture his top priority. He sort of had to. Though arguably one of the most successful technology companies in history, Microsoft's had a string of high-profile misses in mobile, search and social networking. Additionally, the company's toxic culture, characterized by corporate politics, infighting and backstabbing, fed an image of Microsoft as a fading legend. Rivals Apple, Google and Facebook were seen as innovators creating shiny new opportunities with their disruptive tech. A generation grew up without ever having used a Microsoft product. "One of the things that happens when you're super successful is you sort of sometimes lose touch with what made you successful in the first place," Nadella tells us when we ask what he was trying to solve with the hackathon."I wanted to go back to the very genesis of this company: What is that sense of purpose and drive that made us successful? What was the culture that may have been there in the very beginning or in the times when we were able to achieve that success? How do we really capture it?" says Nadella, who joined Microsoft in 1992. It's about "the renaissance as much as about just sort of fixing something that's broken." From story two: CNET: What is the vibe or image of Microsoft you want the world to know? Nadella: It's in our mission. It's empowering. Any association with this company should be, they put some tools, they put some platforms, they gave me the opportunity to really do something. Whether it's a student writing a term paper, whether it's a startup trying to create a company, a small business that's trying to be more productive or even a public sector institution that's trying to be more efficient and serve its citizens -- [they] should feel that association with Microsoft is empowering to them. That's what I want us to stand for.

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