Bill Gates’s Favorite Business Tales, in The New Yorker

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/currency/2014/07/bill-gates-favorite-business-book.html

by prostoalex • 12 years ago

114 24 12 years ago

newyorker.com

shrike• 12 years ago

A link to the Amazon listing - http://www.amazon.com/Business-Adventures-Twelve-Classic-Str...

paul• 12 years ago

It's worth reading the Xerox story: http://www.gatesnotes.com/media/features/books/Bill_Gates_Jo...

Xerox was essentially the hot startup of the 1960's, and it's interesting how similar many of the issues and attitudes were back then, including fears that copying would destroy the publishing industry, struggles with no longer being a startup, and resentment from older industries.

In the opinion of some commentators, what has happened so far is only the first phase of a kind of revolution in graphics. “Xerography is bringing a reign of terror into the world of publishing, because it means that every reader can become both author and publisher,” the Canadian sage Marshall McLuhan wrote in the spring, 1966, issue of the American Scholar. “Authorship and readership alike can become production-oriented under xerography.… Xerography is electricity invading the world of typography, and it means a total revolution in this old sphere.”

...

Dr. Dessauer threw a retrospectively distracted glance at the ceiling and went on, “Hardly anybody was very optimistic in the early years. Various members of our own group would come in and tell me that the damn thing would never work. The biggest risk was that electrostatics would prove to be not feasible in high humidity. Almost all the experts assumed that — they’d say, ‘You’ll never make copies in New Orleans.’ And even if it did work, the marketing people thought we were dealing with a potential market of no more than a few thousand machines. Some advisers told us that we were absolutely crazy to go ahead with the project. Well, as you know, everything worked out all right — the 914 worked, even in New Orleans, and there was a big market for it. Then came the desk-top version, the 813. I stuck my neck way out again on that, holding out for a design that some experts considered too fragile.”

...

McColough said that since he came to Haloid, in 1954, he felt he’d been part of three entirely different companies — until 1959 a small one engaged in a dangerous and exciting gamble; from 1959 to 1964 a growing one enjoying the fruits of victory; and now a huge one branching out in new directions. I asked him which one he liked best, and he thought a long time. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “I used to feel greater freedom, and I used to feel that everyone in the company shared attitudes on specific matters like labor relations. I don’t feel that way so much now. The pressures are greater, and the company is more impersonal. I wouldn’t say that life has become easier, or that it is likely to get easier in the future.”

larrys2• 12 years ago

"Xerography is bringing a reign of terror into the world of publishing, because it means that every reader can become both author and publisher,”"

One of major issues with publishing was distribution. Merely having the tools (back then) to create printed content was not the same as being able to put it in the hands of people that would want to read the content. Without the distribution (or the money to advertise) it didn't matter that you could run off copies or even if you owned your own printing press and bookbinding operation. You still had to get the product in the hands of the public.

dennisgorelik2• 12 years ago

One of major issues with publishing was distribution.

Distribution is still a major issue.

Cost of making a copy is ~$0 now, but it's still hard to distribute your information.

funkyy2• 12 years ago

I see lately a lot of buzz about Bill Gates. Is he coming back as CEO? Is this marketing campaign?

imho Bill Gates is not the person to follow when talking about business. He missed multiple big chances calling them a bubble like internet, mobile and much more. He get where he is out of stealing Windows from Apple, bullied software programmers and created extremely closed environment.

He was person non grata decade ago, but recently people make him a legend... I wonder why the retreat of majority of web society...

jp555• 12 years ago

Why do you think your perception bias is more important than other's?

funkyy2• 12 years ago

Why do you think my perception bias is more important than other's?

Did I say that? Or did I stated my opinion?

I think I just said imho - which means in my honest opinion and I gave some facts. I didnt say nothing else. And as of person non grata - check old posts, forums and "memes" from 10 years ago. All is there. People didnt really liked him.

kenjackson• 12 years ago

And there was a time Steve Jobs was considered a failure who was considered more show than substance. Times change. And time has a way for letting the important persist while forgetting the non-essential.

cpayne2• 12 years ago

You are discounting a LOT of Bill Gate's history. Yes, he did miss the "internet", (as someone who worked with Microsoft in Australia) he literally turned the company around in 6 weeks.

But if you still say Bill "missed" the internet, you are discounting Netscape vs IE wars.

The internet in the 90's was a very different place to the internet today.

But before that, Bill Gates got a lot right! Eg Excel vs Lotus, Word vs Word Perfect, Windows vs OS. The whole history of DOS.

As others have said, its like saying Steve Jobs is a failure because he was sacked by the company he founded (Apple).

drumdance• 12 years ago

Don't forget X-box. They didn't miss the Internet, but they did misfire on music. They had an awfully good track record for a long time.

walterbell2• 12 years ago

Gates Foundation is involved in many non-tech areas, e.g. education & health.

https://www.google.com/search?q=gates+foundation+investment+...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-bill-gates-pulled...

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"The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation didn’t just bankroll the development of what became known as the Common Core State Standards. With more than $200 million, the foundation also built political support across the country, persuading state governments to make systemic and costly changes.

Bill Gates was de facto organizer, providing the money and structure for states to work together on common standards in a way that avoided the usual collision between states’ rights and national interests that had undercut every previous effort, dating from the Eisenhower administration."

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kissickas• 12 years ago

I have never been a hater and respect the man, but knowing that he had a role in promoting Common Core actually lowers my opinion of him considerably.

Have you seen what ridiculous methods they're requiring children to learn in math? No longer can teachers be reasonable by allowing you to solve a problem your own way, as long as you show your work and get the right answer. All this has done is remove parents from the teaching process. I only know about math from my younger cousins and friends who are teachers, but I'm sure some of the other subjects have their own issues.

menriquez• 12 years ago

"All the evidence suggests that communication between people by whatever means, far from simply accomplishing its purpose, invariably breeds the need for more.)"

hmmmmn...ya think?

kristianp• 12 years ago

Discussion from yesterday, article with a similar title, but in the wsj.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8020621

jonahx• 12 years ago

“To set high goals, to have almost unattainable aspirations, to imbue people with the belief that they can be achieved — these are as important as the balance sheet, perhaps more so,” Wilson said once, and other Xerox executives have often gone out of their way to emphasize that “the Xerox spirit” is not so much a means to an end as a matter of emphasizing “human values” for their own sake

Funny how this philosophy has become a prerequisite in the startup world, to the point where even trivial apps with best-case success scenarios of modest profitability must be sold with promises of changing the world (or at least an entire industry), and backstories in which their hyper-focused product, based on 3-year-old technologies, has been the founder's passion since he was 10 years old....

Bill Gates’s Favorite Business Tales, in The New Yorker

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