complex than any idle speculation.

This is not just a story of technical brilliance and enormous wealth. This is evidence of amazing business insight and an obsessive and passionate desire to win. It is also about a management style that is radically different from anything the business world has seen before. Bill Gates offers the businessmen of the future a new model that combines characteristics and skills much better suited to the challenges of the 21st century. For all his flaws, Gates has a lot to teach the next generation of entrepreneurs and leaders.

Gates' Big Idea: "A Computer on Every Desk and in Every Home"

From the earliest days of Microsoft, Gates has been relentless in his dream of "a computer on every desk and in every home." (Remarkably, the original slogan was "a computer on every desk and in every home with Microsoft software," but the latter part is often overlooked these days as it confuses many.)

Now, in retrospect, the spread of personal computers from offices to private homes seems almost inevitable. Looking back is great. But foresight is far more lucrative, as Gates has shown. It's also important to remember that the ubiquitous screens and keyboards that we all take for granted today were the stuff of science fiction just two decades ago. In the 1960s, when futurists in America were trying to predict what trends were likely to shape society at the end of the century, they completely missed the rise of the personal computer. It is also no coincidence that the young Gates devoured science fiction.

However, it is not true that Bill Gates is more responsible for the penetration of the personal computer into homes and offices around the world than, for example, Henry Ford is responsible for the emergence of the mass automobile industry. All they had was the ability to see the possible and play a central role in turning dreams into reality.

Gates set out to achieve his dream by making Microsoft a major player in the computer industry and using its leadership position to create a platform for the explosion of applications. Very early on, Gates realized that the key to success in computer science was industry - creating a standard. He also knew that whoever could develop it first would have power over the entire computer industry.

Years before IBM approached Gates to develop a new personal computer operating system, Gates complained about the lack of a common platform and predicted that without it the potential of the personal computer could not be realized.

The articles that he wrote at that time indicate that he had no idea about the role that fate had destined for him. However, when the opportunity presented itself, Gates realized what it meant and grabbed it with both hands. Since then, he has continued to do the same.

In the early 1980s, under the leadership of Gates, Microsoft went from a developer of programming languages ​​to a versatile computer company that makes literally everything: operating systems like Windows, applications like Word and Excel, tool programs. In this process, Gates transformed the entire computer industry.

Those who like to criticize him and accuse him of a tendency to monopoly should stop for a moment and reflect on where the computer revolution would be now without the timely, albeit mercantile, intervention of Bill Gates. НаToонец, трудно оспорить обвинение в том, что Bill Gates сыграл решающую роль в возвещении эпохи новых technologies. It is also worth remembering that, unlike many truly rich people, he continues to work tirelessly.

How rich is Bill Gates?

Gates is currently the richest person on the planet. In 2001, based on his 22 percent stake in Microsoft, his wealth was estimated at $58.7 billion. But he is only the fifth richest tycoon of all time.

In 1998, Forbes magazine calculated the wealth of former and current businessmen by comparing their lifetime gross national product with their bank balances. By that measure, Texas oil king John D. Rockefeller amassed a fortune of $190 billion, more than three times that of Gates. In second place is Andrew Carnegie, a steel magnate who would be worth $100 billion today. Cornelius Vanderbilt, railroad and shipping tycoon, comes in third with $95 billion; followed by John Jacob Astor, real estate king, with 79 billion.

However, Gates is only in his fifth decade and still has a long way to go. If Microsoft continues to grow faster than America's gross domestic product, then Gates will overtake Carnegie.

The planet will be inherited by the "shifted"

Gates is one of the few CEOs in the computer industry who has managed to survive and thrive in the business. He is a true computer fanatic.

William Henry Gates III was born in Seattle, Washington on October 28, 1955. His parents gave him the nickname Trey, because of the number III in his name, and his family never called him otherwise. Gates' intellect was developed beyond his years - at the age of eight or nine, he read the family encyclopedia from beginning to end. (His company Microsoft would later create Enkarta, the world's first CD-ROM encyclopedia.) But his greatest gift was in mathematics.

Little Bill was crazy about computers already at the age of twelve and during his college years he participated in various software projects with his friend and future business partner Paul Allen. Later, together with Alain, he will establish Microsoft.

A brilliant student, unlike most gifted children, Gates excelled in everything he did. His passion for winning emerged from an early age. At Lakeside, Seattle's most elite private school, attracting the brightest kids on America's West Coast, his love of math turned into an obsession with computers.

James Wallace and Jim Erickson note in their book Hard Drive, "Even in an environment like Lakeside, where smart kids were respected, Gates excelled in intelligence to the point that his comrades teased him for it."

According to one of his classmates, a well-known Seattle architect, “Gates interacted most with the kids in the computer lab. He was poorly socially adjusted and felt awkward around other children. This guy was completely dominated by his passion for computers ... Occasionally you could see him playing tennis, but nothing more. In the beginning, I was afraid of Gates and the rest of the geeks in the computer class. I even idolized them to some extent. But he soon decided that they were just inflated turkeys, and did not want to communicate with them anymore. This was part of the reason I stopped working with computers… They were arrogant, arrogant and unsociable – I just didn’t want to be like that.”

Perhaps these are the words of the fox from the fable "The Fox and the Grapes"? Clearly, Gates and his close associates were especially gifted, even by Lakeside's standards. In his youth, Gates was something of a computer guru for junior Lakeside hackers. Surrounded by his admirers, he spent long hours in the computer lab, telling stories about famous computer hackers.

Gates and some of his computer friends formed the Lakeside Programming Group, which looked for opportunities to make money using their newly acquired knowledge of programming. The model of the future has already been outlined. Gates later noted, “I was the initiator. I was the guy who said, 'Let's call the real world and offer to sell it something.'" At that moment he was thirteen years old.

A striking technical rapport with Alain, who was two years his senior, seems to have developed at that time. Allen's role in Microsoft's history is often downplayed, as is the role of the small Lakeside circle that entered the company. Gates, Allen, Kent Evans, and Richard Weiland—two other members of the Lakeside programming team—often sat for hours on a General Electric and then Computer Center Corporation minicomputer, sometimes not returning home until late at night.

Young Gates was so exhausted working on his computer projects that his parents were alarmed by their son's new hobby. Worried that his activities were detrimental to his studies, they suspended his activities for a while. Gates stayed away from computers for almost a year. Driven by an insatiable thirst for knowledge, he turned his attention to other objects. During this time, he read a number of biographies, including Napoleon and Franklin Roosevelt. He wanted, as he himself said, to understand the way of thinking of great historical figures. He also read non-fiction, business books, and novels. One of his favorite novels was The Catcher in the Rye; later he would read aloud to his girlfriends long passages from this book. Holden Caulfield, the main character, has become one of his idols.

However, plans to create a software company the provisions which young Bill was then nurturing with fellow college students were frozen for a time. His parents insisted that he attend college; they believed that association with other students would have a beneficial effect on him.

Gates' high IQ and personal ambition secured him a place at Harvard University. In the fall of 1973, not yet sure what he wanted to do with his life, Gates arrived at his place of study in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Later, he will say that he went to Harvard in order to learn from people smarter than him ... and was disappointed. Thisт Toомментарий говорит, наверное, стольToо же о самомнении Гейтса, сToольToо о Гарварде.

Gates had chosen to specialize in private law and could be expected to follow in the footsteps of his lawyer father. In reality, however, a career as a lawyer had little attraction for him, and even his parents had no doubt that their wayward son would follow his own course. But none of them, even in their wildest fantasies, could imagine how dizzying this path would be.

As it