Bill Gates Business Quotations

It's fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.

If you can't make it good, at least make it look good.

The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.

Information technology and business are becoming inextricably interwoven. I don't think anybody can talk meaningfully about one without the talking about the other.

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.

The Internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow.

Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.

At Microsoft there are lots of brilliant ideas but the image is that they all come from the top - I'm afraid that's not quite right.

Intellectual property has the shelf life of a banana.

I believe the returns on investment in the poor are just as exciting as successes achieved in the business arena, and they are even more meaningful!

We believe that by taking business processes and making them very visual, very explicit, people can edit processes and see status of processes. We can do something that's quite different than ever before.

Every day were saying, 'How can we keep this customer happy?' How can we get ahead in innovation by doing this, because if we don't, somebody else will.

Whether it's Google or Apple or free software, we've got some fantastic competitors and it keeps us on our toes.

I never took a day off in my twenties. Not one.

I believe that if you show people the problems and you show them the solutions they will be moved to act.

Instead of buying airplanes and playing around like some of our competitors, we've rolled almost everything back to the company.

Most of our competitors were one-product wonders... They would do their one product, but never get their engineering sorted out.

Think of business as a good game. Lots of competition and a minimum of rules. You keep score with money.

We can make market forces work better for the poor if we can develop a more creative capitalism-if we can stretch the reach of market forces so that more people can make a profit, or at least make a living, serving people who are suffering from the worst inequities. ... You have more than we had; you must start sooner, and carry on longer.

If you're too focused on your current business, it's hard to change and concentrate on innovating.

The general idea of the rich helping the poor, I think, is important.

Microsoft is not about greed. It's about innovation and fairness.

Like almost everyone who uses e-mail, I receive a ton of spam every day. Much of it offers to help me get out of debt or get rich quick. It would be funny if it weren't so exciting.

Make it just like a Mac.

Like many others, I have deep misgivings about the state of education in the United States. Too many of our students fail to graduate from high school with the basic skills they will need to succeed in the 21st Century economy, much less prepared for the rigors of college and career. Although our top universities continue to rank among the best in the world, too few American students are pursuing degrees in science and technology. Compounding this problem is our failure to provide sufficient training for those already in the workforce.

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.

The challenge here is to design a system where market incentives, including profits and recognition, drive those principles to do more for the poor. I like to call this idea creative capitalism, an approach where governments, businesses, and nonprofits work together to stretch the reach of market forces so that more people can make a profit, or gain recognition, doing work that eases the world's inequities.

We are always saying to ourself.. we have to innovate. We got to come up with that breakthrough... we're only paid for breakthroughs.

I realized about 10 years ago that my wealth has to go back to society. A fortune, the size of which is hard to imagine, is best not passed on to one's children. It's not constructive for them.

Why do people benefit in inverse proportion to their need? Well, market incentives make that happen.

In 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.

The genius of capitalism lies in its ability to make self-interest serve the wider interest. The potential of a big financial return for innovation unleashes a broad set of talented people in pursuit of many different discoveries. This system, driven by self-interest, is responsible for the incredible innovations that have improved so many lives.

...one of the most inventive forms of creative capitalism involves someone we all know very well. A few years ago, I was sitting in a bar here in Davos with Bono. Late at night, after a few drinks, he was on fire, talking about how we could get a percentage of each purchase from civic-minded companies to help change the world. He kept calling people, waking them up, and handing me the phone to show me the interest.

If we can find approaches that meet the needs of the poor in ways that generate profits for business and votes for politicians, we will have found a sustainable way to reduce inequity in the world. This task is open-ended. It can never be finished. But a conscious effort to answer this challenge will change the world.

The answer is simple, and harsh. The market did not reward saving the lives of these children, and governments did not subsidize it. So the children died because their mothers and their fathers had no power in the market and no voice in the system.

If you believe that every life has equal value, it's revolting to learn that some lives are seen as worth saving and others are not. We said to ourselves: "This can't be true. But if it is true, it deserves to be the priority of our giving."

Well, it's taken time to get this going, but he was right. If you give people a chance to associate themselves with a cause they care about, while buying a great product, they will. That was how the RED Campaign was born, here in Davos.

As I see it, there are two great forces of human nature: self-interest, and caring for others. Capitalism harnesses self-interest in a helpful and sustainable way, but only on behalf of those who can pay. Government aid and philanthropy channel our caring for those who can't pay. But to provide rapid improvement for the poor we need a system that draws in innovators and businesses in a far better way than we do today.

The Internet will help achieve "friction free capitalism" by putting buyer and seller in direct contact and providing more information to both about each other.

Our success has really been based on partnerships from the very beginning.

Television is not real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

I'm truly saddened to learn of Steve Jobs' death. The world rarely sees someone who has had the profound impact Steve has had, the effects of which will be felt for many generations to come. For those of us lucky enough to get to work with him, it's been an insanely great honor. I will miss Steve immensely.

To win big, you sometimes have to take big risks.

If as many people paid for software as they do here, we'd have well more than 10 times the business we do today.

If the 1980s were about quality and the 1990s were about re-engineering, then the 2000s will be about velocity. About how quickly business itself will be transacted. About how information access will alter the lifestyle of consumers and their expectations of business . . . The successful companies of the next decade will be the ones that use digital tools to reinvent the way they work.

There is a new phase now, a business mania around the Internet. We need a new generation of software tools that makes it easy to build this phase,

It is a great pleasure for me to announce that Steve Ballmer -- my long-term partner in building Microsoft and a great business leader -- is being named CEO,

Part of the goal here is to take all these transactions, these business understandings, and really get those into digital form,

Today's realignment optimizes Microsoft's ability to take advantage of the business and technical opportunities we see as customers rapidly adopt the Internet and intranets into their daily lives,

We firmly believe that if enough members of the business community step forward, applying positive employment policies in their own workforce and mentoring other companies, that fact will change,

Of my mental cycles, I devote maybe ten percent to business thinking. Business isn't that complicated. I wouldn't want to put it on my business card.

Anyone who thinks this isn't a hypercompetitive business is crazy,

This antitrust thing will blow over, ... We haven't changed our business practices at all.

This is a business where there's no way to get in small. You have to be totally committed.

Steve will absolutely be the business leader, ... I decided I wanted to spend more time with our product groups and drive the breakthroughs. Think of Steve as the business leader and customer champion.

If improving a product based on customer input is willful maintenance of trying to stay in business and not have Netscape turn their browser into the most popular operating system, then I think that is what we are supposed to do.

I decided that I want to spend more time with our product groups and drive the breakthroughs and it's fantastic for me that Steve can step up to the business management of the company.