The ability of a successful company to add functionality to its product has long been upheld.

In business, the idea of measuring what you are doing, picking the measurements that count like customer satisfaction and performance... you thrive on that.

China has many successful entrepreneurs and business people. I hope that more people of insight will put their talents to work to improve the lives of poor people in China and around the world, and seek solutions for them.

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.

I have a company that is not Microsoft, called Corbis. Corbis is the operation that merged with Bettman Archives. It has nothing to do with Microsoft. It was intentionally done outside of Microsoft because Microsoft isn't interested.

I'm not big on to-do lists. Instead, I use e-mail and desktop folders and my online calendar. So when I walk up to my desk, I can focus on the e-mails I've flagged and check the folders that are monitoring particular projects and particular blogs.

I have a nice office. I have a nice house... So I'm not denying myself some great things. I just don't happen to have expensive hobbies.

No one person controls Microsoft. The board and the shareholders decide whether they want to have me as CEO.

There is a difference between what technology enables and what historical business practices enable.

U.K. companies are in very international and very competitive markets. If you look at PC penetration in the U.K., it is very similar to the United States market.

It's a nice reader, but there's nothing on the iPad I look at and say, 'Oh, I wish Microsoft had done it.'

Eventually, all companies are replaced.

Philanthropy should be taking much bigger risks that business. If these are easy problems, business and government can come in and solve them.

Effective philanthropy requires a lot of time and creativity - the same kind of focus and skills that building a business requires.

The way to be successful in the software world is to come up with breakthrough software, and so whether it's Microsoft Office or Windows, its pushing that forward. New ideas, surprising the marketplace, so good engineering and good business are one in the same.

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.

The advance of technology is based on making it fit in so that you don't really even notice it, so it's part of everyday life.

I actually thought that it would be a little confusing during the same period of your life to be in one meeting when you're trying to make money, and then go to another meeting where you're giving it away. I mean is it gonna erode your ability, you know, to make money? Are you gonna somehow get confused about what you're trying to do?

Intellectual property has the shelf life of a banana.

According to Ethiopian custom, parents wait to name a baby because children often die in the first weeks of life.

It's the poorer people in tropical zones who will get really hit by climate change - as well as some ecosystems, which nobody wants to see disappear.

If African farmers can use improved seeds and better practices to grow more crops and get them to market, then millions of families can earn themselves a better living and a better life.

Well-spent aid money is saving lives for a few thousand dollars per life saved.

I think it makes sense to believe in God, but exactly what decision in your life you make differently because of it, I don't know.

I would counsel people to go to college, because it's one of the best times in your life in terms of who you meet and develop a broad set of intellectual skills.

“Life is not fair — get used to it!”

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

“I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.”

“If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.”

Life is not fair, get used to it.

We start life with many big dreams–things we want to accomplish, create, build and experience. But if you ask anyone past the age of 40 what happened to all the dreams they had, they will most likely answer; Life.

Life has a tendency to just happen. But it happens because we make choices. The life you create and design for yourself is going to accumulate from the choices you make over time. Sure, there are unexpected things that can derail dreams. But we can control where we put our focus, and if we choose to put one dream ahead of another.

Until we're educating every kid in a fantastic way, until every inner city is cleaned up, there is no shortage of things to do.

We all know that there are these exemplars who can take the toughest students, and they'll teach them two-and-a-half years of math in a single year.

Unemployment rates among Americans who never went to college are about double that of those who have a postsecondary education. 

The Gates Foundation has learned that two questions can predict how much kids learn: 'Does your teacher use class time well?' and, 'When you're confused, does your teacher help you get straightened out?'

In K-12, almost everybody goes to local schools. Universities are a bit different because kids actually do pick the university. The bizarre thing, though, is that the merit of university is actually how good the students going in are: the SAT scores of the kids going in.

I don't think there is any philosophy that suggests having polio is a good thing.

In low-income countries, the main problems you have is infectious diseases.

Lectures should go from being like the family singing around the piano to high-quality concerts.

Employers have decided that having the breadth of knowledge that's associated with a four-year degree is often something they want to see in the people they give that job to.

When you revolutionize education, you're taking the very mechanism of how people be smarter and do new things, and you're priming the pump for so many incredible things.

Our teachers deserve better feedback

Research shows that there is only half as much variation in student achievement between schools as there is among classrooms in the same school. If you want your child to get the best education possible, it is actually more important to get him assigned to a great teacher than to a great school.

I've always been interested in science - one of my favourite books is James Watson's 'Molecular Biology of the Gene.'

We all know that there are these exemplars who can take the toughest students, and they'll teach them two-and-a-half years of math in a single year.

Americans want students to get the best education possible. We want schools to prepare children to become good citizens and members of a prosperous American economy.

The bulk of the universities are about teaching kids

Connectivity enables transparency for better government, education, and health.

I have been struck again and again by how important measurement is to improving the human condition.