Bill Gates and Microsoft
Analyze the background and how Bill Gates’s decisions affected the company’s future and the world—starting with his decision to leave Harvard and the innovation he used throughout the life of his career with Microsoft.
To fully understand some of the highlights of the early stage of his career, provide a brief overview of the pivotal decisions Bill Gates made to change the world. Microsoft released a new operating system, Windows, with a graphical user interface that included drop-down menus, scroll bars, and other features.
The following year, the company moved its headquarters to Redmond, Washington, and went public at $21 a share, raising $61 million. By the late 1980s, Microsoft had become the world’s biggest personal computer software company based on sales. In 1995, amidst skyrocketing purchases of personal computers for home and office use, Windows 95 made its debut. It included innovations like the Start menu, and 7 million copies of the new product were sold in the first five weeks. During the second half of the 1990s, Internet usage took off, and Microsoft introduced its web browser, Internet Explorer, in 1995.
The questions that will help you dig deeper into his role as a leader/inventor/innovator are, how he overcame hurdles at the beginning of Microsoft? How did he propel the company’s vision across the world?
