Five things we have learned from Bill Gates

Jason Hiner: Whether or not you're a fan of Bill Gates, it's impossible to deny the role he has played in spreading computer technology across the planet during the past three decades. His retirement as a full-time Microsoft employee in June 2008 marked the end of an era -- and it's one worth looking back on.

I'm Jason Hiner, and today on Sanity Savers for IT Executives, I'll discuss five of the most important lessons we've learned from the meteoric, often turbulent career of the world's most famous software engineer.

Number 5: Geeks can be businessmen, too

Before Bill Gates came along, computer programmers were mostly considered to be a necessary evil. They were stereotyped as misanthropic weirdos, and they were stuck away in dark corners of the back office.

But then Gates became the most successful businessman on earth -- if you judge business success by profits -- and almost single-handedly transformed the term "geek" from an insult to a badge of honor.

Number four: You don't have to be first to win

Gates and Microsoft rarely got to the party first with new technologies, but they were better at bringing their products to the masses than anyone else in the industry. Internet Explorer is the most famous example, but Microsoft Windows, Word, and Excel are also great examples. Microsoft was simply better at executing a business plan, and that's why Microsoft software is now the industry standard.

It didn't hurt that Microsoft often had the most resources, but Gates and company showed over and over again that they knew how to best take advantage of those resources.

Number 3: Computing will spread everywhere

In the 1980s, when the computer was still mostly a novelty, Gates expressed his vision that there would one day be "a computer on every business desk and in every home." That vision has nearly come true in the United States, and it's likely to become a reality that will spread across the globe in the decades ahead.

Gates  vision of the computing experience has continued to inspire the industry in general as well as Microsoft's product plans -- from the smartphone to the Tablet PC to speech recognition to the touch-based interface.

Number 2: Arrogance breeds failure

In the movie Pirates of Silicon Valley, the Bill Gates character says to Steve Ballmer, "Success is a menace. It fools smart people into thinking that they can't lose." 

He was referring to IBM and the fact that it let Microsoft sneak in and steal its thunder in the launch of the PC. Ironically, a decade later, Microsoft's own success and arrogance led to its anti-trust defeat to the U.S. government.

But Microsoft also remained on the lookout for the next small company that might do to it what it had done to IBM. Some of the most popular targets in its cross hairs: Apple, Netscape, Linux, and Google.

Number 1: Software matters

The one message that Bill Gates spent his career reiterating was that software matters. Gates and Microsoft always believed in the magic of software to create amazing digital experiences.

When Microsoft first launched in the 1970s, the computer business was all about the hardware. It was Gates and his vision of what people could do with computers that moved software to the center of the computing experience.

Bill Gates has had a tremendous influence on the direction and advancement of computer technology over the past 30 years. And although his era is coming to an end at Microsoft, we've discussed the five most important lessons that the technology industry has learned from his vision and accomplishments.

I'm Jason Hiner and this has been an episode of Sanity Savers for IT Executives. For more, go to sanity.techrepublic.com. And if you have feedback or your own sanity savings tips, e-mail them to us at sanity@techrepublic.com. If we use one of your tips on the show, we'll send you a TechRepublic coffee mug. Thanks for watching. See you next time.