Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has long been a fan of tumbling literary references into business conversation. He quoted Nietzsche in an investor call. He's paraphrased Oscar Wilde in an employee memo. He's tweeted book lists that include Plato and Piaget, and shared insights about teamwork from a nonfiction tale of the rowing team that won the 1936 Olympics.

Now he is an author with a book of his own. When Nadella's book, Hit Refresh, hits shelves this week, he'll join the few sitting CEOs who've written their own books while still on the job. Even fewer have done so this early in their tenure: Nadella became only the third CEO of Microsoft in February 2014. Part memoir, part leadership guide, part futurist vision of technology, the new book describes how Nadella has been reinventing an aging tech giant into a more open, more collaborative culture focused on putting mobile and cloud computing first.

He obviously has a story to tell. Since Nadella took the helm, Microsoft's stock price has more than doubled. His focus on cloud computing and online productivity software has paid off with strong demand, beating analysts' expectations. He has been on a high-tech shopping spree, adding more than 40 companies over his tenure, including the acquisition of LinkedIn.

He has made Office available on smartphones running other operating systems, and supported the push into ground-breaking areas like the augmented reality headset HoloLens. Perhaps most of all, he's been credited with aiming to overhaul Microsoft's culture, working to shift it from a siloed company with fiefdoms of "know-it-alls" toward a more open, more collaborative culture of what he likes to call "learn-it-alls."

In spite of that success, it's only been three years - and even Nadella admits there is much more work to do. For one, he has frightening competitors in cloud computing - Amazon and Google - and it's too early to know exactly how bets like augmented realism will pay off. 

read also

Kharif Foodgrain production in India is estimated to be lower than in this year.

Job vacancy in Defense Research and Development Organization

Dance Plus 3 winner Bir Radha wants to Dance with Ranveer Singh