From Economist:
Mr Gates had the good fortune to be perfectly suited for his time—but he is less well-equipped for the collaborative and fragmented era of internet computing. This does not diminish his achievement. Nor, as some would have it, does his philanthropy necessarily magnify it. Whatever the corporate-social-responsibility gurus say, business is a force for good in itself: its most useful contribution to society is making profits and products. Philanthropy no more canonises the good businessman than it exculpates the bad. In spite of his flaws, Mr Gates is one of the good kind. Some great industrialists, like Henry Ford, stick around even as the world moves on and their powers fail. Mr Gates, pragmatic to the end, is leaving at the top.
As much as it might be needed, no purge of any hierarchy’s long-since-useful staff is likely (aside from normal attrition of boomers with sufficient retirement savings). Those who resist the most (based on the angry finger-waving I get when I bring it up) are those that don’t have their minds in the right place, a’la Bill G. In the end it isn’t an argument about how successful any given individual or mission was, its about the kind of shift that is taking place all around that overwhelms individual will. I mean, no matter how much you might like the sound, there is a reason why REO Speedwagon is playing at the local country club and not Wolf Trap. Calls for reform aren’t about malice or disrespect, they’re about business. When you make it personal, that’s when you end up causing the most damage.
