Presumably, you all know about Bill Gates' retirement from MicroSoft (at the tender young age of 52). I have been hoping to write something fitting, but now it is crunch time and I thought it might be best to outsource this one: a round-up of some of the best commentaries on Gates we've found so far. My brief commentary follows.
- Best essay goes to David Warsh (recommended by Bob and myself)
- Overview/resource page, go with FORTUNE
- Definitely check out the pieces in WIRED
- Cringely's insights (very critical and very well-informed)
- The 7-minute "last day" spoof video (hat tip Kedrosky)
- And here's a good collection of pieces responding to Bill's call for creative capitalism
My assessment, based on studying this man's life story for over 20 years:
Bill Gates is easily the world's greatest entrepreneur in half a century, by measure of simple value added if nothing else. For what it's worth, let me just say that Bill Gates changed my life in two very big ways. First, he inspired me as a college student with the knowledge that America remains fundamentally a meritocracy with unknowable opportunities. Gates embodied the entrepreneurial spirit by taking on icons of corporate capitalism (and winning) and, I think, reinvigorating the spirit of entrepreneurial capitalism. Second, when my pals and I bootstrapped our little software startup in 1995, we almost failed multiple times, and one of the reasons we survived is because Microsoft was the rock upon which Neocor was built. Many afternoons, we talked about it, painfully aware that without Microsoft we would have simply folded. Not enough can be said about the brilliance of Bill Gates' strategy to nurture third party software developers, something that its competitors strategically chose not to do. It set a standard, and the whole world has been enriched. Bill Gates is an imperfect human being, and many of my closest friends really dislike him and his company's aggressive tactics, but no one should lose sight of his achievements as an engineer, an innovator, and now as a to-the-hilt philanthropist.
I'm OK with Bill as a person, and might even like him ... but I still think it would have been correct to break up MS in the anti-trust trial.
In fact, we could have honestly told Bill that the fact the government had to break up what he built was the highest complement. He took the grand prize.
Posted by: odograph | July 01, 2008 at 10:52 AM
The consequences of Gates's decision to spend the rest of his life and fortune on social problems will ripple out for many generations. If only more people in his wealth cohort would follow his lead, the world would be a much better place for our children.
Posted by: Michael F. Martin | July 01, 2008 at 01:41 PM
You missed a fabulous essay on Gates: Shane Greenstein's "The Long Arc Behind Bill Gates' Wealth," which can be found at http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/greenstein/images/htm/Columns/GatesBiography.pdf
Posted by: anon | July 01, 2008 at 03:46 PM