Bill Gates' Success Factors for Microsoft 1. Long-term Approach 2. Passion for Products and Technology 3. Teamwork 4. Results 5. Customer Feedback 6. Individual Excellence
Bill GatesAmerican dependence on oil has only gone up as we've gone through various crises and not invested in R&D.
Bill GatesWell the Global Fund, because of how well it's worked on not only AIDS, but also malaria and tuberculosis, I'd say it's well accepted. I mean, it's not politically controversial that this is a great humanitarian effort. But budgets are very very tight.
Bill GatesIf you withdraw the incredible focus on polio, it will spread back, and in poor countries you'll get something like 100,000 cases a year. So by being very intense and getting the cases down to zero, what you do is you avoid all the future cases.
Bill GatesThe most meaningful way to differentiate your company from your competition, is to do an outstanding job with information.
Bill GatesDigital reading will completely take over. It's lightweight and it's fantastic for sharing. Over time it will take over.
Bill GatesIn a system of capitalism, as people's wealth rises, the financial incentive to serve them rises. As their wealth falls, the financial incentive to serve them falls, until it becomes zero. We have to find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve wealthier people serve poorer people as well.
Bill GatesThe US in some ways has been the best. Who figured out shale gas? Although that wasn't a good thing [for CO2 levels], it was very innovative. It's led to low-cost energy. Who figured out nuclear power? Largely the United States. Once you get past the steam engine, which is mostly British, then the US has been at the center of most of the energy things that have happened.
Bill GatesIn order for the United States to do the right things for the long term, it appears to be helpful for us to have the prospect of humiliation. Sputnik helped us fund good science - really good science: the semiconductor came out of it.
Bill GatesThe world at large is less inequitable today than at any time in history. Number of people in abject poverty, as a percentage, is at all-time low.
Bill GatesOutlook 2003 did create the idea of search folders and the whole Longhorn philosophy. You can see it at work in search folders, where instead of having to drop things into individual folders, and things exist only in one folder, you create these search folders and you have the criteria for the search folder.
Bill GatesYou have the refugee crisis triggered by Syria. That's got a lot of costs associated with it. Domestically, budgets are incredibly tight because the economy's not generating the growth that makes for easy trade-offs.
Bill GatesThe CEO's role in raising a company's corporate IQ is to establish an atmosphere that promotes knowledge sharing and collaboration.
Bill GatesOh, I think there are a lot of people who would be buying and selling online today that go up there and they get the information, but then when it comes time to type in their credit card they think twice because they're not sure about how that might get out and what that might mean for them.
Bill GatesI'm a great believer that any tool that enhances communication has profound effects in terms of how people can learn from each other, and how they can achieve the kind of freedoms that they're interested in.
Bill GatesVaccination is pretty special because you can do a vaccination campaign anywhere in the world. All you are doing is gathering women from the villages, getting them the vaccines and asking them to go around and find the children.
Bill GatesI don't think I would have spent time learning about the immune system if understanding vaccines weren't something I considered very important.
Bill GatesMost people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.
Bill GatesHistorically, privacy was almost implicit, because it was hard to find and gather information. But in the digital world, whether it's digital cameras or satellites or just what you click on, we need to have more explicit rules - not just for governments but for private companies.
Bill GatesThe world is progressing and resources are becoming more abundant. I'd rather go into a grocery store today than a king's banquet a hundred years ago.
Bill GatesI find golf very relaxing. It's a way to get away from work and get outside. It's a lot of fun, and once you get going it's almost kind of addictive.
Bill GatesThis is something we're very committed to, it's something that I think people are underestimating right now as they've seen some of the dot-com promises not come through. I think they're missing the fact that the basic technology is moving forward, the new platforms are here and this vision of the digital decade will be a reality.
Bill GatesInnovation is often the hidden thing, because we can't put numbers to it. And yet it's the thing that defines the way we live, the things we'd like to have for everyone whether it's health or education.
Bill GatesIf you're too focused on your current business, it's hard to change and concentrate on innovating.
Bill GatesWhat we're really after is simply that people acquire a legal license for Windows for each computer they own before they move on to Linux or Sun Solaris or BSD or OS/2 or whatever.
Bill GatesIn software you can't really add people and expect to get more done, because their ability to understand the program and what's going on it would require so much investment and all their work would require so much review that you'd be more likely to slow things down.
Bill GatesThere was a concept a long time ago that you would do a different type of reactor called a "fast reactor," that would make a bunch of another element called plutonium, and then you would pull that out, and then you would burn that. That's called "breeding" in a fast reactor. That is bad because plutonium is nuclear weapons material. It's messy. The processing you have to get through is not only environmentally difficultly, it's extremely expensive.
Bill GatesThere is this broad, broad recognition of how technology is enabling new things. Companies that never paid attention to computers in any form now see digital technology as creating threats and opportunities for them.
Bill GatesLife is not a continuous process, there's some sort of finite number of achievements that defines your life.
Bill GatesThe US spends more on energy R&D than all other countries put together, and I personally consider it quite inadequate. In fact, I would have said we should more than double it, if I thought the absorptive capacity could scale up and if it was actually possible to get to that level.
Bill Gates