Bill Gates Focus Quotations

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.

It's not easy to remember, but IBM was the computer industry when I was growing up. You loved 'em. You hated 'em. You knew what they were doing. They had set a standard for mainframes. They also set a standard for great sales focus and heavy product R & D.

Only through focus can you do world-class things, no matter how capable you are.

A big focus for us has been reliability. People don't want their video interrupted,

We're hoping the remaining states will join in this agreement so that everyone can focus on the future and avoid the unnecessary costs and delays of further litigation, ... While this decree will place significant restrictions on Microsoft's business, we believe this is a fair and reasonable settlement that will be good for consumers, good for the high-tech industry and good for the economy.

We also had the tragic events of September 11th, and I know for everyone that's caused us to step back, think about our priorities. It's a tragedy that affects us personally and affects our businesses. For the computer industry in particular, I think it highlights the importance of security, giving that far more importance than we've had in the past. We don't want our digital systems to have weaknesses that allow for tragedies, exploiting the weaknesses that are there. And so there's a renewed sense of focus on that.

My success, part of it certainly, is that I have focused in on a few things.

My guideline has always been to avoid a focus on me personally. Not because of any deep, dark secrets. Rather just a sense of privacy.

It is really gratifying, for example, to visit India now and see that because they've had good educational institutions, and they've had a focus on it, there are more and more people in India participating in the world economy.

Teams should be able to act with the same unity of purpose and focus as a well motivated individual.

An important re-engineering principle is that companies should focus on their core competence and outsource everything else.

I'm not big on to-do lists. Instead, I use e-mail and desktop folders and my online calendar. So when I walk up to my desk, I can focus on the e-mails I've flagged and check the folders that are monitoring particular projects and particular blogs.