Bill Gates - foreword has 4 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 7 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.3★ across 393 ratings. The most-rated is Hit Refresh.
Hit Refresh
Summary
Foreword by Bill Gates Microsoft's CEO tells the inside story of the company's continuing transformation, tracing his own personal journey from a childhood in India to leading some of the most significant technological changes in the digital era. As much a humanist as an engineer and executive, Nadella concludes with his vision for the coming wave of intelligent technologies and a distinct call to action for leaders everywhere. Hit Refresh is about individual change, about the transformation happening inside of Microsoft and the technology that will soon impact all of our lives - the arrival of the most exciting and disruptive wave of technology humankind has experienced: artificial intelligence, mixed reality, and quantum computing. It's about how people, organizations, and societies can and must transform "hit refresh" in their persistent quest for new energy, new ideas, and continued relevance and renewal. At its core, it's about us humans and how our one unique quality - empathy - will become ever more valuable in a world where technological advancement will disrupt the status quo as never before. Satya Nadella explores a fascinating childhood before immigrating to the US and how he learned to lead along the way. He then shares his meditations as sitting CEO - one who is mostly unknown following the brainy Bill Gates and energetic Steve Ballmer. He tells the inside story of how a company rediscovered its soul - transforming everything from culture to their fiercely competitive landscape and industry partnerships. Nadella concludes with his vision for the coming wave of technology and by exploring the potential impact to society and delivering a call to action for world leaders. "Ideas excite me," Nadella explains. "Empathy grounds and centers me." Hit Refresh is a reflection, meditations, and series of recommendations presented as algorithms from a principled, deliberative leader searching for improvement - for himself, for a storied company, and for society.
©2017 Satya Nadella; foreword copyright 2017 Bill Gates (P)2017 HarperCollins Publishers
Blitzscaling
Summary
Foreword by Bill Gates LinkedIn cofounder, legendary investor, and host of the award-winning Masters of Scale podcast reveals the secret to starting and scaling massively valuable companies. What entrepreneur or founder doesn't aspire to build the next Amazon, Facebook, or Airbnb? Yet those who actually manage to do so are exceedingly rare. So what separates the start-ups that get disrupted and disappear from the ones who grow to become global giants? The secret is blitzscaling: a set of techniques for scaling up at a dizzying pace that blows competitors out of the water. The objective of blitzscaling is not to go from zero to one but from one to one billion as quickly as possible. When growing at a breakneck pace, getting to next level requires very different strategies from those that got you to where you are today. In a book inspired by their popular class at Stanford Business School, Hoffman and Yeh reveal how to navigate the necessary shifts and weather the unique challenges that arise at each stage of a company's life cycle, such as: how to design business models for igniting and sustaining relentless growth; strategies for hiring and managing; how the role of the founder and company culture must evolve as the business matures, and more. Whether your business has 10 employees or 10,000, Blitzscaling is the essential playbook for winning in a world where speed is the only competitive advantage that matters.
©2018 Reid Hoffman and Chris Yen (P)2018 Random House Audio
Tools and Weapons
Summary
The instant New York Times best seller From Microsoft's president and one of the tech industry's broadest thinkers, a frank and thoughtful reckoning with how to balance enormous promise and existential risk as the digitization of everything accelerates. "A colorful and insightful insiders’ view of how technology is both empowering us and threatening us. From privacy to cyberattacks, this timely book is a useful guide for how to navigate the digital future." (Walter Isaacson) Microsoft President Brad Smith operates by a simple core belief: When your technology changes the world, you bear a responsibility to help address the world you have helped create. This might seem uncontroversial, but it flies in the face of a tech sector long obsessed with rapid growth and sometimes on disruption as an end in itself. While sweeping digital transformation holds great promise, we have reached an inflection point. The world has turned information technology into both a powerful tool and a formidable weapon, and new approaches are needed to manage an era defined by even more powerful inventions like artificial intelligence. Companies that create technology must accept greater responsibility for the future, and governments will need to regulate technology by moving faster and catching up with the pace of innovation. In Tools and Weapons, Brad Smith and Carol Ann Browne bring us a captivating narrative from the cockpit of one of the world's largest and most powerful tech companies as it finds itself in the middle of some of the thorniest emerging issues of our time. These are challenges that come with no pre-existing playbook, including privacy, cybercrime and cyberwar, social media, the moral conundrums of artificial intelligence, big tech's relationship to inequality, and the challenges for democracy, far and near. While in no way a self-glorifying "Microsoft memoir", the audiobook pulls back the curtain remarkably wide onto some of the company's most crucial recent decision points as it strives to protect the hopes technology offers against the very real threats it also presents. There are huge ramifications for communities and countries, and Brad Smith provides a thoughtful and urgent contribution to that effort.
©2019 Brad Smith, Carol Ann Browne, Bill Gates (P)2019 Penguin Audio
A Children's Guide to Folklore and Wonder Tales
Summary
In The Children's Guide to Folklore and Wonder Tales, Dr. Hannah Blevins Harvey unpacks more than 60 of our most beloved stories, fables, fairy tales, and songs from around the world - providing you with a fascinating, in-depth view into the history, context, and deeper meaning of the tales we know and love. As you travel through the catalogs of Grimm, Aesop, Hans Christian Andersen, Charles Perrault, Oscar Wilde, and so many more, you'll gain profound insights into how and why these stories came to be. Supplementing the stories and insights provided by Dr. Harvey, child psychiatrist Dr. Zheala Qayyum, from Yale University's Medical School and Department of Psychiatry, weighs in on the importance of stories, folktales, and imagination-building exercise in the healthy development of children, no matter where they live. Throughout this unique course, Dr. Harvey presents not only the exploration of themes, questions, and evolutions but, as a nationally-known professional storyteller and an internationally-commended performer, she also treats you to dynamic, theatrical, and engaging tellings of cherished tales from around the world, both beloved classics and lesser-known treasures. Join us to discover a collection of stories that will lift your heart, haunt your dreams, and challenge your expectations. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
©2017 The Teaching Company, LLC (P)2017 The Great Courses