Bill Gates is the chairman of the software Company Microsoft and he is one of the world’s richest men in the world according to Forbes. With Paul Allen, they founded Microsoft in 1970s. Gates oversaw the invention and marketing of the MS-DOS operating system, the Windows operating system interface, Internet Explorer browser and other popular computer products. During the 1990s, due to Microsoft stock price rise, it made Gates the world wealthiest man, his wealth has at times exceeded $75 billion, making Gates a popular symbol of the ascendant computer-geek of the late 20th century. However in June 2006, Gates announced that he would work on part time basis by July 2008. He mentioned he would remain chairman of the Microsoft board while focusing on his charitable foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. (Bill Gates Biography 2006)
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How a Geek Changed the World
The biggest business channel of Indian media NDTV Profit arranged a talk show with Bill Gates and the most successful business executive of Asia Narayana Murthy. When a businessman from the audience asked Bill Gates the secret of success the great tycoon presented a five-point master formula of success. (Bill Gates Tells the Secret of His Success 2006)
Find Your Passion
It is almost impossible to be successful in anything without passion, passion generates focus. Bill Gates has a huge passion for computer and software. When he was studying in Lakeside School, he fell in love with the computer there and surpassed the knowledge of his teacher within a week. He wrote his first program when he was 13. According to Albert Einstein genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration. But without passion, it’s very difficult to get self-motivated and work hard. When we realize our hidden passion, the work becomes fun and we will enjoy it more and more.
Make Yourself Intelligence
Bill Gates also mentioned that success depends on our intelligence. Different people have different level of intelligence however most people think intelligence like a physical strength which all people can’t be equal in it. It is true however physical strength can be developed, this also applies with intelligence. We can develop intelligence by reading books, watching documentary shows, getting general knowledge from the internet, socializing or arranging a debate, or practice memorizing for instance.
Be Open and Honest with Your Work
Being honest is important whether it is in business or relationship. Deceiving causes damage in human relations and our progress. Try to be sincere in everything such as efforts, relations and business policies. ‘Honesty is the best policy’ is a really wise saying. Bill has his quality of integrity so that he has a long term partners in business. He also has a very good family relationship, one of them is with his wife Melinda. Research has also proved that integrity is also good for health as it prolongs one’s life span.
Create A Good Team
Having a team of intelligent people is important to succeed in business. The motto of modern business world is ‘combine and succeed’. There are two types of teams: partnership and assistance. Even the big companies are doing joint venture or partnership to become stronger to face competition. For a single person it is very hard to develop nowadays. If we aren’t up for a partnership, at least we have to have a team of intelligent people to progress fast. Bill Gates himself understood the value of a good team when he was just a high school student. He teamed up with Paul Allen to find a company to sell traffic counter to state government and help his school’s payroll system computerize. While in Harvard University he met his later business partner Steve Ballmer. Later he with Paul Allen and Monte Davidoff wrote the original Altair Basic interpreter for the Altair 8800, the first successful personal computer
Good Leadership
Our team will be motivated in working if we are able to provide good leadership. For a businessman, his office is like a home and his team is like his family. He shares his happiness and sorrows and keeps motivating them time to time to be better and achieve the targets. Giving them proper punishment and rewards will keep his team disciplined and united and lead them to big success. He always share his gains with his staffs by giving promotions or bonuses.
THOMAS ALVA EDISON
Inventor of Practical Electric Bulb
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work”
The Wizard of Menlo Park
Thomas Alva Edison, with only three months of formal education he was successfully became one of the greatest inventors and industrial leaders in history. Edison’s major innovation was the first industrial research lab, which was built in Menlo Park, New Jersey. It was built with the funds from the sale of Edison’s quadruplex telegraph. Edison greatest invention was the first practical electric light bulb. He also build the first electrical power distribution company. Not only those, he also invented phonograph and make improvements to the telegraph, telephone and motion picture technology.
Edison was also good in doing business. He invented important new devices, as well as created companies worldwide for the manufacture and sale of his inventions. Edison was also a ruthless businessman who fought hard to compete with his competitors. One of the most notorious examples of his competitive vigor were the lengths he went to discredit Nicola Tesla’s Alternating Current system, which is the system of electrical distribution in use today. (Thomas Edison American Inventor 1996)
Edisonian Approach: Trial and Errors
There are several techniques that Edison used to achieve his success:
Focus Your Energy
The way to increase the power of anything is to focus our energy and concentration to a single point. He knew that with focus, effort and absolute determination, he could achieve what he wanted to achieve, even when all the odds were against him. By focusing your mind on a creative, you will develop your creative ability and your thinking will uncover amazing new solutions.
Work On Ideas That Are Being Worked On By Others
It is clear that Edison didn’t really invent the electric light bulb. However, his contribution to the perfection of this device is really impressing.
Documenting
Thomas Edison compiled over 3500 notebooks detailing his ideas and experiments and wrote his thoughts onto over four million pages of notes during his lifetime. It’s true that all the great creative minds have been writers, note bookers who record their observations, thoughts and ideas. Writing our ideas down gives us massive encouragement to creative thinking and we should begin immediately to apply this most simple of Edison’s creative thinking techniques.
Experimental Feedback
Thomas Edison applied his creative thinking, putting it to the test through trial and experimentation. He knows the only way to increase knowledge was through experience and experience was gained through experiment. By experimenting, Edison could investigate what happened when he did a certain thing in a certain way with a specific set of tools. He could investigate cause and effect, action and reaction. He could then change the tools slightly and notice how those changes affected the experimental results. And such is the creative life. Have idea – Test idea – Note result – Tweak idea – Test tweaked idea – Note result – continue as necessary. A marketer may have a creative idea for a marketing campaign. She has to put it into action and do a test campaign to know whether it is as good an idea as she hopes. The results come back in. The idea will be tweaked to see whether the results can be improved on subsequent tests. Each test gives vital new information on the worth of this marketing idea. Depending on the results that are generated the idea will be dismissed or put into wide spread use. Feedback is essential to the creative process of improving upon existing and new ideas.
Systems and Teams/Mastermind Alliance
Thomas Edison was aware that when it came to creativity, two heads were better than one.
Thomas Edison knew that when it came to creative thinking, two heads were better than one. He was a master at organizing and utilizing the creative abilities and talents of others in very focused creative pursuits and projects. Edison’s dynamic and forceful character galvanized the enthusiastic young team of bright minds that he attracted to his Menlo Park “Invention Factory”. You can see that Bill Gates has done a similar thing at Microsoft employing the brightest young minds to work on his team. Companies like Google follow the same principle. By working with a team of creative people you can exponentially increase and improve your creative output. (Wily Walnut 2008)
ALBERT EINSTEIN
Father of Modern Physics
“The important thing is not to stop questioning… Never lose a holy curiosity”
Father of Relativity
Albert Einstein developed a theory about the relationship of mass and energy. The formula, E=mc[2], is probably the most famous outcome from Einstein’s special theory of relativity. The formula says energy (E) equals mass (m) times the speed of light (c) squared. In other words, it means mass is just one form of energy. Since the speed of light squared is a large number (186,000 miles per second)[2], a small amount of mass can be converted to a phenomenal amount of energy. Or, if there’s a lot of energy available, some energy can be converted to mass and a new particle can be created. Nuclear reactors, for instance, work because nuclear reactions convert small amounts of mass into large amounts of energy. (Mary Bellis)
Einstein also explains the Theory of Relativity. Relativity explains the way an object appears to be relative to an observer. You can understand this if you consider yourself in a car, observing other cars. Imagine you are observing a car travelling at 20 km/h. If your car is stationary, then the other car’s speed relative to you is 20 km/h. However if you are travelling alongside the car also doing 20 km/h, then the other car seems to be stationary compared to you. Its speed relative to you is zero. (Einstein’s Scientific Achievements 2005)
Never Stop Being Curious
There are several ways how Einstein’s mind works:
Behave like a child while learning, Be curious about everything what you learn.
Children are curious. They are like a blank paper, waiting to be filled with knowledge and experiences. They don’t have predetermined expectations clouding their judgment. Children absorb the world around with an open mind driven by sheer curiosity. Also curiosity can uncover the truth, All that seems obvious in life is not necessarily true. A curious person discover the truth themselves without taking someone’s word straightaway. It is more satisfying and convincing when we see the facts itself rather than hearing from someone.
Create Mind Maps, Draw some pictures and colour them.
Mind mapping is about writing down a central idea and thinking up new and related ideas which spread out from the centre. By concentrating on the central ideas written down in our own words, and then searching for branches out and links between the ideas, we are mapping knowledge in a way which will help us understand and remember new information.
Day Dreaming: Dream at least for 5 min daily.
Many people assumed daydreaming is an act of laziness. But it has also been able to produce many popular artistic careers such as a music composer, novelist, or a film maker who do a lot of creative thinking and develop new ideas.
“When a person is thinking or fantasizing about his unfulfilled wishes, desires, all that for which he is passionate about, he gets carried away by them and starts day-dreaming,” says a well known psychologist Dr Aruna Broota.
d. Use your right part of your Brain: Right part of the brain has the ability for creative thinking.
The right brain functions are all about visualization, imagination and looking at things from a larger perspective. The right brain are designed to promote imaginative and creative thinking. Right brain games are incidentally a lot of fun, this is an example of fun activities that help us loosen up and get fresh perspective on things. Most of the time, we focus on a problem and keep thinking on the same lines, whereas what is needed is to be looked at from different perspective. (Einstein’s Secret Revealed: Tap the Genius in You 2008)
2. Comparison between those three
a. Bill Gates Method
Advantages
It can’t be denied that one key aspect to Bill Gates success is passion. Having passion in what we are doing is a key to success that is often overlooked. But I know that passion is essential to achieve any kind of long lasting success. If we don’t have passion, everything we do will produce only average result because we never enjoy doing them. People who have passion in what they are doing, they will never give up, since they have no reason to give up, no matter what their circumstances might be.
Information Technology changes rapidly, we need to keep ourselves updated by reading books for instance. Read as much as possible, It won’t hurt you. Why is reading so important? With this skill you have access to all of the accumulated knowledge from the past and the present.
One of the key successes of Bill Gates is being honest of what we are doing. Nowadays, being honest in business will always mean that you will get better business in the long run. In business, being honest means that we will keep everybody informed regarding our true state and objectives. The advantage of being honest is not only this will set the appropriate amount of expectations, but will also clear things, whether the person is ready to do business with us.
Most of Bill Gates work are done in a team. There are several benefits from working in a team such as more people will generate more ideas; we will have larger range of skills; parallel working will enhance speed; and people in a team can support and encourage each other.
Last but not least, being a good leader needs skills and practice. A good leader is not about commanding people around but rather the ability to influence his characteristics to the team he is working with. An example of characteristics of good leadership will be discipline and self confidence. A good leader will know that his characteristics are being observed and followed by those around him. A good leadership will increase the work productivity and loyalty of staffs.
Disadvantages
Unfortunately, being honest in business isn’t an easy job. It is still hard for people to estimate whether a business service or product is worth paying for, especially when it is expensive. We will find people turning away from us, as they learn the truth.
But still, being honest is a good thing. For example, if people keep ignoring your sincere offer, it means that they won’t appreciate your work. It also means that they have a very high expectation now and in the future. When we speak honestly and find the right customer, the chances are he/she will listen. He/she will trust you and agree to work on your conditions. The biggest benefit of speaking honestly is that we will enjoy working with someone who enjoys our work.
Working in a team sometimes can be frustrating and unproductive, such as office politics, large number of people working in a small task, conflicts between team member, and also members with larger personalities can harm the confidence of the quieter team member. However this can be tackled by hiring the right person and good leadership.
b. Edison Method
Advantages
One of Edison philosophy is to monotask, focus all our attention or energy to one single thing. We never can pay full attention to two jobs at once, for example when we are writing while having a conversation, we are switching our attention back and forth between those two quickly. We are juggling and when we juggle tasks, our work deteriorates and takes longer to complete because of switching tasks. So by monotasking, we can improve the quality of work and the amount of time spent.
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We learn more from failure rather than success. It took Edison approximately ten thousands experiments to figure out the perfect element for the electric light bulb. There was a lot of learning to go through. There is no such knowledge in books. He simply never gives up trying, failing and learning. We must actively seek out failure and learn from it. We shouldn’t be afraid of getting anything wrong. Failure is our friend. Every failure is simply an experiment. Experiments are set up to see what results occur and to learn from doing them.
Disadvantages
Some people are good at multitasking, and they can complete tasks faster with the same quality of result. Applying monotasking on these kind of people will deteriorate their efficiency and energy. By multitasking, those energy can be fully utilized to complete tasks.
We also should know when to stop, give up and move on. If we don’t enjoy the job we are doing or unsatisfied, stop for a while and review it. We shouldn’t be wasting our time on something we don’t enjoy or feel right doing. Another example is when we are injured and we should be taking a week off and miss an important match this week, we give up that match and get well soon so that we can play on the following match. So it’s important to know when to give up otherwise we or somebody else will get hurt. This also applies in relationship; maybe giving up a relationship is for our best interest.
Albert einstein
Advantages
Being curious in life can bring happiness. Curiosity is about learning for ourselves and sharing what we have learnt. We can be curious about anything, even the things we have already known. Curiosity is an important aspects of a genius. Almost all inventors and great people, they are all curious people. Being curious can make our mind active, we always ask questions and search for answers; it increases the awareness of our mind for new ideas, because without curiosity, we won’t look further of those particular new ideas; and we will have a very exciting life because new things always attract our attention
Einstein always encourage us to utilize and train our right brain. People with right-side brain dominance are tend to be more creative in things such as painting or music composing. Whereas, people with left-sided brain dominance deal with reality and use less imaginations. According to a scientist at Middle Tennessee State University, people with right brain dominance tend to think outside the box. This is helpful with projects and problem solving.
Disadvantages
There is a time when being curious can lead to inefficiency. When we are curious on a lot of small unproductive things such as checking blog comments, refreshing facebook page, keep an eye on our watchlists in ebay several times per day at random intervals. And we are aware that we do this far more frequently than we needed to.
“Curiosity killed the cat” is an expression that means don’t be nosy because we could get hurt. This expression is based on the fact that cats are nosy and mischievous and often find themselves is dangerous situations, such as being stuck in a tree or running in front of traffic.
Yes, curiosity can lead to nosyness. It is not shocking when people who labeled themselves as friends, but when things go bad for us, all they want is the gossip. And the worst things about it is that most of these nosy friends spread it to others and they just don’t care about us and our feeling.
Critical reflection
What I have learnt from Bill Gates, is that I have to have passion for everything I do to achieve success. In studies I have to learn to love everything I am studying. If I don’t enjoy them, then I will fail or barely pass the units. Also I don’t have to be the first to win. Computer has already existed when Bill Gates were born, but he was able to make the device better and bring their products to the masses than anyone else in the industry. Microsoft was simply better at executing a business plan, and that’s why Microsoft software is now the industry standard. This also applies to Edison, he didn’t invent the first electric light bulb, he made them perfect and produced the first commercially practical electric bulb. So when I see things has been working properly, I shouldn’t stop thinking about them, what I should do is to think whether I can make things better.
To be successful, I also have to know how to do business. Being genius is useless if I can’t make money out of it. Bill Gates quoted, “If you can’t make it good, at least make it look good”, well the purpose of making it look good is that he can sell the product to people and make money.
What I learn from Edison is not to fear failure. Failure can be a beautiful experience, because it develop my courage. And there’s a saying, “What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger”, every failure as long as I learn from it, it will make me a better person. The best way for describing a failure is by realizing that failure is an event, not a person. For example, if I tried something and fail 20 times, I wouldn’t be a failure, but I am a person who has experienced 18 failures. So if there’s something I want to do and unsuccessful yet, I won’t stop trying. Remember, the only people who never fail are those who never try.
However there should be a clear line on where we are taking it too far and we have to stop trying. For example, I have been in love with a girl for a year, she keeps saying no when I asked her out. There was a time when she was so upset because I keep calling her. Also because of this, I lost focus at work, I kept thinking of her, I started drinking. In this case, giving up and moving on aren’t bad ideas. This is for my happiness and hers. I gain experience by making mistakes. I don’t drown by falling in water, I drown by staying there. So let’s start today by defying failure, learning from our mistakes, and forging ahead.
Edison also encourages us to do tasks one at a time. For me, it is time to step back and take a look at things I am trying to do. I pick my first priority and stick with it until it is totally accomplished. I might find that multitasking such as doing 3 things at once, I could really accomplish things faster. But then I stepped back and looked at what I have done and I saw plenty of small mistakes here and there.
I need to learn how to focus on task at hand. Doing more isn’t always better if I haven’t done it accurately. It just means I have accomplished more jobs but haven’t finished any of them.
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