Unlikely Idols

Or ideals or whatever... Working as I am, somewhat linked to information technology and fairly strongly linked to intellectual property, Bill Gates has been a villian in some way or the other. If you look for stories, there are endless ... how he took DOS, made some changes and called it his own, how Windows is full of bugs and is unweildy but just had a large market share so we're stuck with it... Enough and more. But when you're not looking, suddenly you find the person.

He was in India some time ago and was interviewed with NR Narayan Murthy. NRN and Infosys have been compared to Bill Gates and Microsoft due to some parallels in creation and functioning. I now believe that the comparison is favourable to both. As I said, earlier, Bill Gates was this big bad mogul who was continuously making money off a bad product. In the initial stages, it couldn't have been his fault. If anybody else was enterprising enough or had a good enough product, they would have come up anyway. The market itself was developing so it probably would have been difficult for Microsoft to monopolise anything. However, once it was somewhat established, claims of anti-competitive activies seem well founded. It appears from trial transcripts that part of their business strategy was suppressing their rivals.

But now, Bill Gates seems to have moved beyond that. By some quirk of fate, today I read something that makes me think that he's still the inventive geek who's excited by a new idea and somewhat depressed by the behemoth that his organisation has become. The first is a snippet of an interview that he gave to Wall Street Journal where he admitted to watching stuff on YouTube. Outrightly a crime in itself. A crime which the Microsoft Corporation has exerted international pressure to stamp out. One that still concerns them in China. And Mr. Gates is guilty himself :) Must give him pause. I believe that now he sees greys. When Microsoft was growing, there was black and red. Do what you need to to stay in the black. Now, it would be tremendously hard for them to fold up immediately. They've reached the status of an IBM or whatever was their main target when they started out. They're the big guys now, all the little innovators are lining their sights up on MS, hoping to be the David in this battle... as undoubtedly MS was when it started out.

Forgive a minor digression... do you think that when a little guy starts out, he sees turning into his enemy as success? Google was a young entrepreneurial bunch who were exciting and fresh. They had a great idea and wanted to beat the pants off the MSs and Yahoos of the world. They have, and now have become one of them. Do they think that's success? They're no longer on the other side, trying to get in, now they're working to keep people out... Will consider this much much later.

Back to MS. I believe that BG (got tired of typing his full name, don't know him well enogh for Bill and can't really call a person Gates, now can I?) has turned a corner. Till now it was about how well MS is doing, how much money he's making, what's the latest project etc. But now I think he's slowing down. He's realised that the future of MS is more than just his life span. It's more also, than the people he's groomed to run the company the way he would. The Gates Foundation, that was always active in social work, has begun a committed effort to improving the standard of education in America. Another post sometime may be about how America's greatest wealth at one point was its intellectual capital and now they find that most of it is imported. So they run the risk of everybody suddenly going home. Where would that leave the US? In a rather sorry state. What's the obvious solution? Find talent in schools, make it worth a student's while to stay in school and go to college and... basically contribute to the economy rather than be a daily wager.

In those terms, MS and Infosys have shown tremendous value generation both for themselves and their country. Infosys to a much less extent in cash, but a rather large extent in good will... and MS may be the reverse :)

So now, BG seems focussed on moving his country forward in some concrete way, without joining politics. I believe that in some ways, joining politics will be a step down for him. In a country where lobbies are strong and available, he doesn't need to get personally involved with that. What he does need to do is to make people use their mind... and not just those that work for him. Which brings me to the second thing I read... though it sounds like a rip off of Spiderman, "I believe that with great wealth comes great responsibility, a responsibility to give back to society, a responsibility to see that those resources are put to work in the best possible way to help those most in need." Three Cheers for BG!!!

Why? Cause this is the way I see it as well. Those that come up in society have been given some breaks and opportunities. It's their duty to see that society receives something back. I don't suppose I can explain it coherently but I definitely believe that if you have more than you need, then you're blessed and you've a duty to see that in some way, you help those that don't have what they need. In India... it's not difficult to see those who have nothing, but somehow, we're just not there yet.