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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 Gates

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One Thing People Underestimate

Bill Gates

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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.

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At Some Point, That Risk-taking Private Capital Can Take Over, And Have Patents And Trade Secrets And Things That Let Them Lead The Way, Which Happened With The Steam Engine And Some Other Things, Although With Energy, The Time Of Adoption Is A Lot Longer Than It Is With, Say, It Products Or Even Medical Advances, Like Drugs And Vaccines.

I Have A Company That Is Not Microsoft, Called Corbis. Corbis Is The Operation That Merged With Bettman Archives. It Has Nothing To Do With Microsoft. It Was Intentionally Done Outside Of Microsoft Because Microsoft Isn't Interested.

The Us Really Has To Get Out In Front. We Are The Biggest Per Person, By A Substantial Amount, Greenhouse Emitters, And We Give The Most Foreign Aid, Not Per Person But In Absolute.

I Have Not Met [donald] Trump And Discussed Any Issues With Him. There Have Been Republican Administrations Like The [george] Bush Administration Who Initiated This Aids Generosity. So It's Not Purely A Right-left Thing.

The Chinese Are Clearly Inculcating The Idea That Science Is Exciting And Important, And That's Why They, As A Whole-they're Graduating Four Times As Many Engineers As We Are, And That's Just Happened Over The Last 20 Years.

The Truth Of Moore's Law Has Made Remarkable Things Possible. On The Software Side, I Think Natural User Interfaces In All Their Forms Are Equally Significant.

Learning From Mistakes And Constantly Improving Products Is A Key In All Successful Companies.

Microsoft Looks At New Ideas, They Don't Evaluate Whether The Idea Will Move The Industry Forward, They Ask, 'how Will It Help Us Sell More Copies Of Windows?

Never Before In History Has Innovation Offered Promise Of So Much To So Many In So Short A Time.

People Can Criticize Microsoft For Supporting This Tv Thing For The Past Eight Years, But It Is A Long-term Bet, There Is Not Any Other Software Business That Is As Dedicated To The Vision Of The Tv And The Pda [personal Digital Assistant] As We Are.

The Close Relationships We Form Between Researchers And Product Groups Have Already Shown We Can Move The Great Ideas As They Come Along, Without A Schedule, Into The Products.

The Obvious Mathematical Breakthrough Would Be Development Of An Easy Way To Factor Large Prime Numbers.

The Best Way To Prepare [to Be A Programmer] Is To Write Programs, And To Study Great Programs That Other People Have Written. In My Case, I Went To The Garbage Cans At The Computer Science Center And I Fished Out Listings Of Their Operating Systems.

Perhaps I Should Be Flattered That Somebody Imagines The Name Is Worth So Much, Especially Since My Parents Gave Me The Same Name 42 Years Ago For Free.

Effective Philanthropy Requires A Lot Of Time And Creativity - The Same Kind Of Focus And Skills That Building A Business Requires.

It Is My Belief That Industry And Government Around The World Should Work Even More Closely To Protect The Privacy And Security Of Internet Users, And Promote The Exchange Of Ideas, While Respecting Legitimate Government Considerations.

By 2035, There Will Be Almost No Poor Countries Left In The World.

We Need To Look At Less Obvious Paths, Things Like The Wind In The Jet Stream, Which Is Very High Up. The Material Science Of What Type Of Kite String You Would Need To Connect Up To That. That's Still At The Basic Research Level.

Microsoft Is Not About Greed. It's About Innovation And Fairness.

Bringing Together The Right Information With The Right People Will Dramatically Improve A Company's Ability To Develop And Act On Strategic Business Opportunities.

Whenever You Have Multiple Devices Including Multiple Pcs That You Want To Share Information With, It's Always Been A Bit Complicated.

The Pc Has Improved The World In Just About Every Area You Can Think Of. Amazing Developments In Communications, Collaboration And Efficiencies. New Kinds Of Entertainment And Social Media. Access To Information And The Ability To Give A Voice People Who Would Never Have Been Heard.

The Thing About Hd-dvd That Is Attractive To Microsoft Is That It's Very Pro-consumer In Letting You Copy All Movies Up Onto The Hard Disk.

Think Of Business As A Good Game. Lots Of Competition And A Minimum Of Rules. You Keep Score With Money.

The 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.

I Don't Think There's Anything Unique About Human Intelligence.

I Don't Have A Magic Formula For Prioritizing The World's Problems.

How You Gather, Manage, And Use Information Will Determine Whether You Win Or Lose.

I Did Not Even Finish My Studies

Teaching Is The Human Thing, In Terms Of Building The Kids' Self-confidence, So If We Take The Broad Ways That We Want To See Society To Be Better, Science Can Only Provide Certain Pieces Of That.

Self Confidence

Married Life Is A Simpler Life. Who I Spend My Time With Is Established In Advance.

The Kids Are A Big Part Of My Schedule.

If I'd Had Some Set Idea Of A Finish Line, Don't You Think I Would Have Crossed It Years Ago?

Don't Let Yourself Be Lulled Into Inaction.

You May Have Heard Of Black Friday And Cyber Monday. There's Another Day You Might Want To Know About: Giving Tuesday. The Idea Is Pretty Straightforward. On The Tuesday After Thanksgiving, Shoppers Take A Break From Their Gift-buying And Donate What They Can To Charity.

Harnessing Steam Power Required Many Innovations, As William Rosen Chronicles In The Book 'the Most Powerful Idea In The World.'

I'm Quite Worried About The Fiscal Imbalances That We've Got And What That Might Mean In Terms Of Financial Crisis Ahead.

Going Out In The Field, It's Always Enlightening To See What's Working And What's Not And To Sit Down And Talk - I Was With Young Girls In South Africa - Understanding Why Our Tools For Prevention Aren't Being Adopted, And What Way May Need To Invent To Help Protect Them.

Microsoft Has Had Its Success By Doing Low-cost Products And Constantly Improving Those Products And We've Really Redefined The It Industry To Be Something That's About A Tool For Individuals.

The Most Meaningful Way To Differentiate Your Company From Your Competitors, The Best Way To Put Distance Between You And The Crowd Is To Do An Outstanding Job With Information. How You Gather, Manage And Use Information Will Determine Whether You Win Or Lose.

I Don't Have Any Tvs With Their Over-the-air Receivers Connected In My House. But When I'm In A Hotel Room Or Other Places That Have A Tv, Then I Turn It On And Flip The Channels Just Like Everybody Else. I'm Not Immune To The Lures Of Television. I Just Try To Stay Away From It Because I Like To Read.

When I Was In My 40s, Microsoft Was My Primary Activity.

The Part Of Uranium That's Fissile - When You Hit It With A Neutron, It Splits In Two - Is About 0.7%. The Reactors We Have Today Are Burning That 0.7%.

Polio's Pretty Special Because Once You Get An Eradication, You No Longer Have To Spend Money On It; It's Just There As A Gift For The Rest Of Time.

I've Said Some Stupid Things And Some Wrong Things, But Not That. No One Involved In Computers Would Ever Say That A Certain Amount Of Memory Is Enough For All Time.

A Company's Ability To Respond To An Unplanned Event, Good Or Bad Is A Prime Indicator Of Its Ability To Compete.

There Is No Doubt That As An Economy Grows In A Great Way Like India Has, That You Have To Step Back And Change Your Tax Systems, Because You Start To Get More Disparities Of Wealth.

In 1990, One In 10 Children Died Before The Age Of Five. That's Now Down To One In 20, And Vaccines Were The Single Biggest Factor In That. Had It Stayed At 10 Percent, 122 Million More Children Would Have Died.

My Broad Sense Of This Is That Authors Like Smil Really Paint The Clear Picture, And Once You See That, It's Kind Of Oh, Of Course. That's Such A Primal Thing To All These Physical Services That We Take For Granted.

Students Deserve Great Teachers. And Teachers Deserve The Support They Need To Become Great.

(in Response To Java) Anybody Who Thinks A Little 9,000-line Program That's Distributed Free And Can Be Cloned By Anyone Is Going To Affect Anything We Do At Microsoft Has His Head Screwed On Wrong.

Exposure From A Young Age To The Realities Of The World Is A Super-big Thing.

The Dreams Of The Past - Whether It Was Public Tv Being Rolled Into The Classroom To Teach Spanish, Or The Film Projectors Or The Videotapes Or The Computer-aided Instruction Drill Systems - The Hopes Have Been Dashed In Terms Of Technology Having Some Big Impact. The Foundation, I Think Can Play A Unique Role There. Now, Our Money Is More To The Teacher-effectiveness Thing, And Technology Is No. 2, But I'll Probably Spend More Money On The Technology Things.

We All Know That There Are These Exemplars Who Can Take The Toughest Students, And They'll Teach Them Two-and-a-half Years Of Math In A Single Year.

Intermittency [in Availability For Wind And Solar] Changes The Economics, Particularly This Requirement That The Power Company At All Times Be Able To Require Power. That's Large.

To Be A Good Professional Engineer, Always Start To Study Late For Exams Because It Teaches You How To Manage Time And Tackle Emergencies.

I Didn't Even Complete My University Education

University Education

The Machines Need To Get Faster. They Need To Get Cheaper.

Something Like Windows Is Still An Unbelievable Asset But Because The World Is Somewhat Phone-centric, It's An Asset That Has To Be Managed Very Carefully To Make Sure That It's Extended, And There Are Very Interesting Things That Are Being Done With That.

Great Organizations Demand A High Level Of Commitment By The People Involved.

The Information Society Should Serve All Of Its Citizens, Not Only The Technically Sophisticated And Economically Privileged.

Creating A Piece Of Software Is Always Complicated Because You're Doing Something New. If You Just Wanted Something That Had Been Done Before You'd Just Use That Old Piece Of Software. So There Are No Repetitive Tasks.

Me And My Dad Are The Biggest Promoters Of An Estate Tax In The Us. It's Not A Popular Position.

We're Only At The Beginning Of What We Have To Do Here.

3d Is A Way Of Organizing Things, Particularly As We're Getting Much More Media Information On The Computer, A Lot More Choices, A Lot More Navigation Than We've Ever Had Before.

Our Current Expectations For What Our Students Should Learn In School Were Set ﬁfty Years Ago To Meet The Needs Of An Economy Based On Manufacturing And Agriculture. We Now Have An Economy Based On Knowledge And Technology.

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

Energy Is Actually Harder; It Takes More Time To Get A Product, But If You Do It's A Very, Very Big Market And The Constraints Of Doing That In A Clean Way Are More Obvious All The Time.

If You Were Born Poor, It's Not Your Fault. But If You Die Poor It Is.

Online Education Is Pretty Special For Two Reasons. One Is That You Can Get The Very Best Lecture In The World And Wherever You Are, Whenever You Want, You Can Connect To That Lecture. The Other Is This Interactivity, Where If You Know A Topic, You Can Kind Of Skip Over It. Or If You're Confused About It, [the Area] Where You're Confused Can Be Analyzed By Software.

Windows Is Probably The Most Important Product In The Entire Pc Industry. Everything We Do In Terms Of Supporting Touch, New Hardware, Accessibility Has Incredible Impact.

I Don't Generally Read A Lot Of Fiction.

The Most Important Work I Got A Chance To Be Involved In, No Matter What I Do, Is The Personal Computer... I Even Knew Not To Get Married Until Later Because I Was So Obsessed With It. That's My Life's Work.

Computers Are Great Because When You're Working With Them You Get Immediate Results That Let You Know If Your Program Works. It's Feedback You Don't Get From Many Other Things.

The Billion People Who Wake Up Every Day Trying To Figure Out If They Have Enough Food To Eat Won't Be At Davos.

I'm Invested In A Lot Of Battery Companies - And There's A Lot That Exists I'm Not In.

If Success Corrupts, I'm Probably Pretty Corrupted By Now.

Steve Jobs' Ability To Focus In On A Few Things That Count, Get People Who Get User Interface Right, And Market Things As Revolutionary Are Amazing Things.

Software Is A Great Combination Between Artistry And Engineering. When You Finally Get Done And Get To Appreciate What You Have Done It Is Like A Part Of Yourself That You've Put Together. I Think A Lot Of The People Here Feel That Way.

As You Improve Health In A Society, Population Growth Goes Down. You Know, I Thought It Was... Before I Learned About It, I Thought It Was Paradoxical.

I Think That Our Progress On Key Diseases Over The Next Several Decades Is Going To Be Pretty Amazing And So I Am Very Interested In That.

By Helping Us To Be More Productive, Technology Lets Us To Spend Less Time Focusing On Survival, And More On Solving Other Challenges.

If You Go Back To 1800, Everybody Was Poor. I Mean Everybody. The Industrial Revolution Kicked In, And A Lot Of Countries Benefited, But By No Means Everyone.

Success On The Web Require High-level Corporate Understanding Of The Internet's Capabilities And Support Of Early Test-and-invest Projects.

It's The Knowledge Derived From Information That Gives You A Competitive Edge.

The Key Thing You Can Do To Reduce Population Growth Is Actually Improve Health.

If You Give People Tools, And They Use Their Natural Abilities And Their Curiosity, They Will Develop Things In Ways That Will Surprise You Very Much Beyond What You Might Have Expected.

If Geek Means You're Willing To Study Things, And If You Think Science And Engineering Matter, I Plead Guilty. If Your Culture Doesn't Like Geeks, You Are In Real Trouble.

You 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.

By The Time We See That Climate Change Is Really Bad, Your Ability To Fix It Is Extremely Limited... The Carbon Gets Up There, But The Heating Effect Is Delayed. And Then The Effect Of That Heat On The Species And Ecosystem Is Delayed. That Means That Even When You Turn Virtuous, Things Are Actually Going To Get Worse For Quite A While.

The Poor Can't Wait. Philanthropists Needed To Carry On Being Generous.

If We Think Long Term, The Younger Generation Here Is Better About Embracing The World. Not Seeing Countries Boundaries Kind Of An "us Versus Them" Thing.

People Often Overestimate What Will Happen In The Next Two Years And Underestimate What Will Happen In Ten.

I Read A Lot Of Obscure Books And It Is Nice To Open A Book.

Our Success Has Really Been Based On Partnerships From The Very Beginning.

Nuclear Energy, In Terms Of An Overall Safety Record, Is Better Than Other Energy.

Computers And Games Don't Waste Time - People Do.

We Will Never Make A 32-bit Operating System.

Operating Systems

I've Been Studying How Quickly We Can Get Energy Out To The Poor Countries - A Lot Of Which Are In Africa - And How Little Progress We've Made There. There's No More Electricity Today In Sub-saharan Africa Per Person Than There Was 20 Years Ago.

There's A Lot That Can Be Done For People Who Are Using Technology In A Better Way.

It's Ok For China To Invent Cancer Drugs That Cure Patients In The United States. We Want Them To Catch Up. But As The Leader, We Want To Keep Setting A Very, Very High Standard. We Don't Want Them To Catch Up Because We're Slowing Down Or, Even Worse, Going Into Reverse.

Cutting Through Complexity To Find A Solution Runs Through Four Predictable Stages: Determine A Goal, Find The Highest-leverage Approach, Discover The Ideal Technology For That Approach, And In The Meantime, Make The Smartest Application Of The Technology That You Already Have - Whether It's Something Sophisticated, Like A Drug, Or Something Simpler, Like A Bednet.

Robotics And Other Combinations Will Make The World Pretty Fantastic Compared With Today.

The Misconception That Aid Falls Straight Into The Hands Of Dictators Largely Stems From The Cold War Era.

In 80% Of The World, Energy Will Be Bought Where It Is Economic. You Have To Help The Rest Of The World Get Energy At A Reasonable Price.

We Get Comfort From Those Who Agree With Us, But We Get Growth From Only Those Who Don't Agree With Us !

You Can Always Think Of Something Like The Xbox 360 As A Super Set-top Box That Can Do Everything The Set-top Box Does, But Then Have The Graphics To Do The Games As Well.

Great Organizations Demand A High Level Of Commitment By The People Involved. Eliminate Politics, By Giving Everybody The Same Message. Keep A Flat Organization In Which All Issues Are Discussed Openly. Empower Teams To Do Their Own Things.

One Of The Statistics That Always Amazes Me Is The Approval Of The Chinese Government, Not Elected, Is Over 80 Percent. The Approval Of The U.s. Government, Fully Elected, Is 19 Percent. Well, We Elected These People And They Didn't Elect Those People. Isn't It Supposed To Be Different? Aren't We Supposed To Like The People That We Elected?

People Should Just Buy A Cd And Rip It. You Are Legal Then.

I'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.

We've Got To Put A Lot Of Money Into Changing Behavior.

Middle-income Countries Are The Biggest Users Of Gmos. Places Like Brazil.

Most Of Our Competitors Were One-product Wonders... They Would Do Their One Product, But Never Get Their Engineering Sorted Out.

China Is Certainly An Important Player In The Global Economy, And A Widespread Aids Epidemic Would Threaten That Growth.

I Get More Spam Than Anyone I Know.

Measuring Programming Progress By Lines Of Code Is Like Measuring Aircraft Building Progress By Weight.

One Thing I've Always Loved About The Culture At Microsoft Is There Is Nobody Who Is Tougher On Us, In Terms Of What We Need To Learn And Do Better, Than The People In The Company Itself. You Can Walk Down These Halls, And They'll Tell You, 'we Need To Do Usability Better, Push This Or That Frontier.'

If Something's Expensive To Develop, And Somebody's Not Going To Get Paid, It Won't Get Developed. So You Decide: Do You Want Software To Be Written, Or Not?

The Spread Of Online Information Isn't Just Good For Charities. It's Also Good For Donors. You Can Go To A Site Like Charity Navigator, Which Evaluates Nonprofits On Their Financial Health As Well As The Amount Of Information They Share About Their Work.

I Think It's Fair To Say That Personal Computers Have Become The Most Empowering Tool We've Ever Created. They're Tools Of Communication, They're Tools Of Creativity, And They Can Be Shaped By Their User.

Certainly I'll Never Be Able To Put Myself In The Situation That People Growing Up In The Less Developed Countries Are In. I've Gotten A Bit Of A Sense Of It By Being Out There And Meeting People And Talking With Them.

Considering Their Impact, You Might Expect Mosquitoes To Get More Attention Than They Do. Sharks Kill Fewer Than A Dozen People Every Year, And In The U.s. They Get A Week Dedicated To Them On Tv Every Year.

The Center For Disease Control Started Out As The Malaria War Control Board Based In Atlanta. Partly Because The Head Of Coke Had Some People Out To His Plantation And They Got Infected With Malaria, And Partly Cause All The Military Recruits Were Coming Down And Having A Higher Fatality Rate From Malaria While Training Than In The Field.

Microsoft Does Not Dominate The Software Industry By Any Stretch Of The Imagination. We Have Lots Of Very Able Competitors Who Keep Us Constantly Vigilant, And Sometimes They Beat Us To The Punch. Microsoft's Success To Date Is Based Solely On The Fact That People Like Microsoft Software.

Making Sure All Our Students Get A Great Education, Find A Career That's Fulfilling And Rewarding, And Have A Chance To Live Out Their Dreams ... Wouldn't Just Make Us A More Successful Country - It Would Also Make Us A More Fair And Just One.

Personal Computing Today Is A Rich Ecosystem Encompassing Massive Pc-based Data Centers, Notebook And Tablet Pcs, Handheld Devices, And Smart Cell Phones. It Has Expanded From The Desktop And The Data Center To Wherever People Need It - At Their Desks, In A Meeting, On The Road Or Even In The Air.

China Adopted A Capitalist System In The 1980s, And They Went From A 60% Poverty Rate To 10%.

I Considered Law And Math. My Dad Was A Lawyer. I Think Though I Would Have Ended Up In Physics If I Didn't End Up In Computer Science.

Success Is A Lousy Teacher. It Seduces Smart People Into Thinking They Can't Lose.

Take Agriculture, Where We Haven't Done Much, Or Sanitation; Saying, "okay, We Will Be Able To Make A Really Huge Effort There." It Really Energized The Foundation And Half Of What We've Gotten Done In This Last Decade Is Because Warren [buffett] Trusted Us.

Taking A Look Back, One Big Reqret Is, I Left Harvard With No Real Awareness Of The Awful Inequities In The World. The Appalling Disparities Of Health And Wealth And Opportunity That Condemned Millions Of People To The Lives Of Despair. I Learned A Lot Here At Harvard About New Ideas And Economics, And Politics. I Got Great Exposure To The Advances Being Made In The Sciences. But Humanities Greatest Advances Are Not In Its Discoveries, But In How Those Discoveries Are Applied To Reduce Inequity.

You Need To Understand Things In Order To Invent Beyond Them.

I'm Serious When I Do My Work. I'm Not Serious When I'm Home With My Kids.

If Empathy Channels Our Optimism, We Will See The Empathy And The Diseases And The Poor School. We Will Answer With Our Innovations And We Will Surprise The Pessimists.

I Believe Innovation Is The Most Powerful Force For Change In The World.

I Don't Think Culture Is Something You Can Describe.

Investing For The Poor Requires Participation From The Entire Community.

There Won't Be Anything We Won't Say To People To Try And Convince Them That Our Way Is The Way To Go.

You Wish That You Could Move More Rapidly And You Have Setbacks. You Know, The Aids Epidemic Was A Huge Setback For Africa, And It's Only Through Generosity That We've Avoided That Just Completely Crippling An Entire Generation There.

I Watched The Piles Of Feces Go Up The Conveyor Belt... They Made Their Way Through The Machine... A Few Minutes Later I Took A Long Taste Of The End Result: A Glass Of Delicious Drinking Water.

I Hope Corporations Will Dedicate A Percentage Of Their Top Innovators' Time To Issues That Could Help People Left Out Of The Global Economy. This Kind Of Contribution Is Even More Powerful Than Giving Cash Or Offering Employees' Time Off To Volunteer. It Is A Focused Use Of What Your Company Does Best. It Is A Great Form Of Creative Capitalism, Because It Takes The Brainpower And Makes Life Better For The Richest, And Dedicates Some Of It To Improving The Lives Of Everyone Else.

In Ninth Grade, I Came Up With A New Form Of Rebellion. I Hadn't Been Getting Good Grades, But I Decided To Get All A's Without Taking A Book Home. I Didn't Go To Math Class, Because I Knew Enough And Had Read Ahead, And I Placed Within The Top 10 People In The Nation On An Aptitude Exam.

The 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.

I Never Took A Day Off In My Twenties. Not One.

Death Is Something We Really Understand Extremely Well.

R&d Generally Has Been A Bipartisan Thing, Because In The It Space, In The Medical Space, The U.s., The Benefits To Ourselves And The World And Our Economy Have Been Very, Very Clear. I'm Hopeful We Can Make A Very Strong Case There. Energy Is Actually Harder; It Takes More Time To Get A Product, But If You Do It's A Very, Very Big Market And The Constraints Of Doing That In A Clean Way Are More Obvious All The Time.

The Next Big Invention That Will Change The Way We Live Should Be Things Like Ways Of Generating Energy Like Electricity.

We're All Responsible For Creating A Polio-free World While We Still Can.

You Will Not Make $60,000 A Year Right Out Of High School. You Won't Be A Vice-president With A Car Phone Until You Earn Both.

Windows 8 Is Key To The Future, The Surface Computer.

I Have A Particular Relationship With Vinod Khosla Because He's Got A Lot Of Very Interesting Science-based Energy Startups.

Very Interesting

Even For The Very Best Programmers Ah, Sometimes You'll See Someone Else's Program Or Somebody Will Come Along And They'll Show You What Can Be Done In A Simpler Way.

Kenya’s M-pesa Proves That When People Are Empowered, They Will Use Digital Tech To Innovate On Their Own Behalf.

I Definitely Think Leaving Kids Massive Amounts Of Money Is Not A Favor To Them.

There's A Basic Philosophy Here That By Empowering...workers You'll Make Their Jobs Far More Interesting, And They'll Be Able To Work At A Higher Level Than They Would Have Without All That Information Just A Few Clicks Away.

I Believe The Government Has The Right To Recover From The Heirs To The Fortunes Of Its Most Successful Citizens Some Portion Of Those Fortunes.

The Bulk Of The Universities Are About Teaching Kids.

The Worst Pandemic In Modern History Was The Spanish Flu Of 1918, Which Killed Tens Of Millions Of People. Today, With How Interconnected The World Is, It Would Spread Faster.

American Dependence On Oil Has Only Gone Up As We've Gone Through Various Crises And Not Invested In R&d.

We Have To Find A Way To Make The Aspects Of Capitalism That Serve Wealthier People Serve Poorer People As Well.

We Need To Start Thinking About The Future Of Food If We Are Going To Feed 9 Billion People In A Way That Does Not Destroy Our Environment.

Whether You Believe It A Moral Imperative Or In The Rich World's Enlightened Self-interest, Securing The Conditions That Will Lead To A Healthy, Prosperous Future For Everyone Is A Goal I Believe We All Share.

Prosperous Future

I Remember Thinking Quite Logically That I Didn't Want To Spoil My Children With Wealth And So That I Would Create A Foundation, But Not Knowing Exactly What It Would Focus On.

I Don't Think There's Anything Unique About Human Intellience. All The Nuerons In The Brain That Make Up Perceptions And Emotions Operate In A Binary Fashion.

It's Fantastic That Microsoft In The Cloud Space Is One Of Very Few Companies That's Got The Critical Mass, The Particular Emphasis On Helping Business Customers Get Up To That Cloud With All The Unique Requirements They Have. It's Very Exciting.

Creativity Allows People To Be Effective.

Contraception Really Shouldn't Be All That Controversial Because It's A Tool A Woman Can Use To Delay Her First Birth Until She's, Say, 18 Or 19 Years Old.

Historically, 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.

I Was A Kind Of Hyper-intense Person In My Twenties And Very Impatient.

The Ideal Thing Would Be To Have A 100 Percent Effective Aids Vaccine. And To Have Broad Usage Of That Vaccine. That Would Literally Break The Epidemic.

China Has Many Successful Entrepreneurs And Business People. I Hope That More People Of Insight Will Put Their Talents To Work To Improve The Lives Of Poor People In China And Around The World, And Seek Solutions For Them.

We're Creating This Alliance, Gavi, That Has Helped Buy The Vaccines That Were In The Rich World But Not Getting To The Poor Kids, Getting A Very Cheap Price And Figuring Out The Cold Chain, Getting The Delivery Right, And Then Funding Research For New Vaccines. A Lot Of Them Are Coming Along. We've Got A Meningitis Vaccine Out, Got That Through Large Parts Of Africa. That Has Been A Huge Success.

Look At The Clock When You Are Sitting Idle. But Never Look At The Clock When You Are Working.

In 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.

Stolen's A Strong Word. It's Copyrighted Content That The Owner Wasn't Paid For.

There Are No Significant Bugs In Our Released Software That Any Significant Number Of Users Want Fixed.

If You Believe That All Men Are Created Equal, Then A Child's Death In Some Other Country Is No Less Tragic Than In The United States.

I Believe That With Great Wealth Comes Great Responsibility, A Responsibility To Give Back To Society And A Responsibility To See That Those Resources Are Put To Work In The Best Possible Way To Help Those Most In Need.

Software Innovation, Like Almost Every Other Kind Of Innovation, Requires The Ability To Collaborate And Share Ideas With Other People, And To Sit Down And Talk With Customers And Get Their Feedback And Understand Their Needs.

The Scientific Understanding Of Some Of These [childhood] Diseases Is Advancing Quite Rapidly. There's Some Things Like Premature Birth Or Nutrition, First Day Deaths That We Need A Lot More Insights So That We Can Build The Tools To Solve Those Problems.

I'm Certainly Well Taken Care Of In Terms Of Food And Clothes ... Money Has No Utility To Me Beyond A Certain Point. Its Utility Is Entirely In Building An Organization And Getting The Resources Out To The Poorest In The World.

I'm Not An Educator ... I'm A Learner.

My Innovation Message, Specifically Including Energy, Happened To Be The Same Week That On Monday And Tuesday I Announced The Breakthrough Energy Venture Group. Then On That Tuesday Afternoon, In December, Was When I Sat Down With Him. I Explained The Us Has Great Science Here, This Is Where The Market For These Things Is Going To Be. It Connects To Less Pollution, It Connects To U.s. Jobs, It Connects To Security, Not Needing The Energy Coming From Far Away.

A First-generation Fortune Is The Most Likely To Be Given Away, But Once A Fortune Is Inherited It's Less Likely That A Very High Percentage Will Go Back To Society.

Google's Done A Super Good Job On Search; Apple's Done A Great Job On The Ipod.

The Inventory, The Value Of My Company, Walks Out The Door Every Evening.

The Media Covers What’s New – And Millions Of People Dying Is Nothing New. So It Stays In The Background, Where It’s Easier To Ignore. But Even When We Do See It Or Read About It, It’s Difficult To Keep Our Eyes On The Problem. It’s Hard To Look At Suffering If The Situation Is So Complex That We Don’t Know How To Help. And So We Look Away.

There Were A Lot Of Missteps In The Early Days, But Because We Got In Early We Got To Make More Mistakes Than Other People.

Success Is A Lousy Teacher. It Makes You Think You Know What You're Doing.

I Would Counsel People To Go To College, Because It's One Of The Best Times In Your Life In Terms Of Who You Meet And Develop A Broad Set Of Intellectual Skills.

Software Is More Important Than Hardware.

The Computer Will Live Your Life, Listen To You And Understand You Better Than Humans Can.

Your School May Have Done Away With Winners And Losers, But Life Has Not.

I Mean, If We Said Right Now, There's Somebody In The Next Room Who's Dying, Let's All Go Save Their Life, You Know, Everybody Would Just Get Up Immediately And Go Get Involved In That.

I've Always Been Amazed By Da Vinci, Because He Worked Out Science On His Own. He Would Work By Drawing Things And Writing Down His Ideas. Of Course, He Designed All Sorts Of Flying Machines Way Before You Could Actually Build Something Like That.

Contrary To Popular Belief, I Don't Spend A Whole Lot Of Time Following Soccer. But As I Have Traveled Around The World To Better Understand Global Development And Health, I've Learned That Soccer Is Truly Universal. No Matter Where I Go, That's What Kids Are Playing. That's What People Are Talking About.

In Low-income Countries, Getting To A Health Post Is Hard. It's Very Expensive.

The Two Areas That Are Changing... Are Information Technology And Medical Technology. Those Are The Things That The World Will Be Very Different 20 Years From Now Than It Is Today.

I Think Given All The Different Imperatives - Getting Energy To Africa, Security Of Energy, Climate Change, That We Should Be Spending Half As Much As We Spend On Health, Which Will Get You All The Way Up To $15 Billion - The Health People Don't Like It When Things Get Compared To Their Number.

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Hesketh Pearson

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