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William
Henry "Bill" Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American business magnate,
philanthropist, author and chairman of
Microsoft,
the software company he founded with Paul Allen. He is consistently ranked among
the world's wealthiest people. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the
positions of CEO and chief software architect, and remains the largest
individual shareholder. He has also authored or co-authored several books.
Gates is one of the best-known
entrepreneurs of the personal computer
revolution. In the later stages of his career, Gates has pursued a number of
philanthropic endeavors, donating large amounts of money to various charitable
organizations and scientific research programs through the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation, established in 2000. |
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Success,
Achievement
I really had a lot of
dreams when I was a kid, and I think a great deal of that grew out
of the fact that I had a chance to read a lot.
I believe that through our natural inventiveness,
creativity and willingness to
solve tough
problems, we're going to make some amazing
achievements in all these
areas in my lifetime.
I like my job because it involves
learning.
I like being around smart people who are trying to figure out new
things. I like the fact that if people really try they can figure out
how to invent things that actually have an impact.
Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces
smart people into thinking they
can't lose.
Once you embrace unpleasant news not as
negative but as evidence of a need for
change, you aren't defeated by
it. You're
learning from it.
Capitalism is this wonderful thing that
motivates people, it causes
wonderful inventions to be done.
Creating
Customer Value
Microsoft is a company that manages
imagination.
We're focused on providing
innovations in software, driving
the
continuous improvement for a much
better experience, and there's a lot going on here that speaks to this
decade and what's going to happen in this decade. We can kind of sum it
up in terms of saying, "Yes, you can."
Every day were saying, 'How can we
keep this customer happy?' How can we
get ahead in
innovation by doing this, because if we don't, somebody
else will.
You need to know about
customer feedback
that says things should be better.
Your most unhappy
customers are your
greatest
source of learning.
Learning from mistakes and
constantly
improving products is a key in all
successful companies.
Listening to customers is a big
part of that effort. You have to study what customers say about their
problems with your products and stay tuned into what they want,
extrapolating from leading-edge buyers to predict future requirements.
People Power
As we look ahead into the next century,
leaders will be those who
empower others.
Great organizations demand a high level of commitment by the people
involved.
If you give people tools, [and they use] their natural ability and their
curiosity, they will develop things in ways that will
surprise
you very much beyond what you might have expected.
The
vision
is really about
empowering workers, giving them all the
information about what's going on so they can do a lot more than they've
done in the past.
I believe that if you show people the
problems and you show them the
solutions they will be moved to act.
You've got to give great tools to small
teams. Pick good people, use
small
teams,
give them excellent tools... so that they are very
productive in terms of what they are doing.
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