Apart from his legendary entrepreneurial skills and seemingly permanent inclusion in ‘world’s richest’ lists, history sees Bill Gates as a determined technological innovator, dogged entrepreneur, astute businessman, and philanthropist of late. No one can deny his visionary leadership. Everybody recognizes the fact that he founded the software industry. But people, likewise, cannot forget that, while Gates is an innovator, he is hardly an inventor. For the most part, what he did was improve on already existing products such as DOS which he bought during his early years for a few thousand dollars.

Bill Gates has been judged by recent history as the ‘world’s computer genius and innovator of the PC who missed the Internet train’ (Turner, 2007). He did not succeed in making Microsoft an Internet star. His Net contribution in the form of a browser has been dislodged by the giant Mozilla Firefox browser, for instance, as a more Internet-friendly innovation. He ‘missed to see the impending possibility that PCs will work within networks that connect them.’

If Gates was not an inventor of products, he certainly was a discoverer of marketing strategies and developer of new markets. Gates’ strength has always been in knowing people’s needs. What he did was to know the needs of the markets so well, and fashioned the products being churned out by his software development team to fit those market needs that he came to know about. In the end, Gates is remembered more for his business savvy than his technological innovations. He laughed/still laughs all the way to the bank as he has created an ecosystem that put a desktop in almost every home on the majority of the planet.

But his sights are not very much in IT anymore. He has stepped down from managing Microsoft on a day-to-day basis. Bill Gates vision is now focused on the real and threatening dangers of the world. Nowadays, Bill Gates is known more for his philanthropy, with his Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Among other things, he helps fund vaccine research for AIDS and other infectious diseases, as well as helping Africa be more sustainable in terms of food production. According to the Foundation’s website, he now wants to enhance healthcare and reduce extreme poverty.

From his old concepts of ‘kinder capitalism’ and ‘creative capitalism,’ Bill Gates is now revolutionizing the world with his concept of ‘philanthrocapitalism.’

He is still, though, very much into knowing and fulfilling people’s needs.

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Via TED