One thing people underestimate is how markets don't allow anyone to do anything except make better and better products. There's not much leeway. The world is a lot more competitive than most people think, particularly in a high-technology area. If a company takes its eye off improving its products, if it tries to do anything that would be viewed as an exercise of power, it'll be displaced very rapidly.
Bill GatesTo get a big company moving fast, especially on a many-headed opportunity like the Internet, you have to have hundreds of people participating and coming up with ideas.
Bill GatesCertainly there's a phenomenon around open source. You know free software will be a vibrant area. There will be a lot of neat things that get done there.
Bill GatesThe typical project design time for a large company like IBM - and they keep track of this - is a little over four years.
Bill Gates