[2][3] In 1998 and in 2013, Sinofsky was a visiting scholar at Harvard Business School where he worked with students enrolled in a second year class on technology product development taught by Marco Iansiti and Stefan Thomke.

[5] Sinofsky attained his Bachelor of Arts from Cornell University, after graduating cum laude in 1987, with a dual major in chemistry and computer science.

Windows 7 proved to be a major success, with a rapidly growing user-base of over 450 million,[20] and its launch contributed to record-breaking revenue earnings for Microsoft in 2010.

This was a radical departure from Microsoft's typical way of handling in-development versions of Windows, which was to publicly share all plans and details about it early in the development cycle.

Many of its design changes were meant to allow it to scale across PC and mobile interfaces in response to the rising popularity of touchscreen devices over PCs.

"[33] Some aspects of Windows 8, including live tile menu interfaces and screen edge swiping, became standard components of mobile operating systems.

[31] His departure was described by both parties as a mutual decision,[3] but some news outlets speculated that it was the result of friction between himself and CEO Steve Ballmer.

[35][36] Technology websites Ars Technica and ZDNET drew attention to the sense of staffing changes that occurred after the Windows 8 rollout, and the abrupt manner of his departure.

[39] Microsoft disclosed in an SEC filing that Sinofsky would have a one-year non-compete contract in exchange for an estimated $14 million of stock.

[46] Sinofsky co-authored the book One Strategy: Organization, Planning, and Decision Making with Marco Iansiti of Harvard Business School.

The book was built around selected blog posts written by Sinofsky to communicate with the rest of the Microsoft team during the development of Windows 7.

Sinofsky's personal insights and experiences recorded through the blog are interspersed with Iansiti's academic commentary on the challenges facing the team.

Lisa Oliva wrote that it "provided a great balance between theoretical and practical explanations" in a review for the Journal of Applied Management and Entrepreneurship.

The work details the emotions of creating "hardcore software" a reference to the 1988 recruiting slogan that brought Sinofsky to Microsoft.