#3 Bill Gates

Gates is known to be the founder of Microsoft, a computer software company since 1975, pioneering a graphical user interface in 1985; Windows 1.0 and by introducing millions to the Internet in 1995; Windows 95 along with Internet Explorer. Microsoft introduced MSN Search in 1998, the same year when Google was founded. But Google was fast and innovative in delivering results.

Incident:

Through search, Google earned revenue of $348 million in 2002 and in the later year Google almost tripled its revenue to $962 million. Finally, Microsoft started developing a search engine, Windows Live Search in 2006 but failed to compete with Google. In 2009, it revised and brought out a new version, Bing.

What You Can Learn:

In 1998, apart from Microsoft, none of the other companies had more leverage online. If Gates had prioritized the development of search engine then Google would have been the second biggest search engine. Since he aimed at software, he overestimated the importance of Internet Explorer.

Always keep in mind that your industry keeps changing. Just because a strategy worked out for your business in the past, it doesn’t mean you can count on it being the best method today.

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