When Satya Nadella became Microsoft's CEO in 2014, the company was widely seen as a has-been—a relic of the PC era being disrupted by mobile and cloud competitors. A decade later, Microsoft is more valuable than ever, having added over $2 trillion in market capitalization under his leadership.

Nadella's transformation of Microsoft offers lessons for any leader facing disruption. Rather than defending legacy businesses, he embraced cloud computing and open source software—heretical moves for a company built on Windows and Office. More importantly, he changed Microsoft's famously combative culture to one of collaboration and continuous learning.

"Our industry does not respect tradition—it only respects innovation," Nadella has said. This philosophy has guided Microsoft's remarkable reinvention.