Life Plan and Personality Development: Bill Gates - Essay Example

? Life Plan and Personality Development: Bill Gates Life Plan and Personality Development:Bill Gates Bill Gates is a successful business personality, an inspiration for people all around the world. He is an example of the world’s greatest entrepreneurs (Lowe, 2000). This paper covers the background and influencing factors, which affected the life of a renowned personality named as William Henry Gates III and later known as ‘Bill Gates’. A laconic but informative description on questions about this personality such as how was he brought up, the social atmosphere and environment he grew in, and some special incidents which had a revolutionary impact on his thinking capabilities and made him what he is today have been answered in this paper. Furthermore, what he became and how he accommodates his thinking capabilities regarding innovations in his field of work to his entrepreneurship skills have also been highlighted in this paper. Bill Gates was born on October 28th, 1955 in Seattle, Washington. His parents were professionals; his father was a renowned lawyer and mother was a member of the board of First Interstate Bank and also the United Way (Gates, Domonkos, Myhhrvold, & Rinearson, 2008). Gates has two sisters, Kristi (Kristianne) who is older than him and Libby who is younger than him. Gates came from an upper middle class family and therefore, he had a chance to enjoy strong financial background with few worries about life. His family always encouraged him to participate in competition and to compete for excellence in life. Bill’s family teaching developed his competitive skills and his determination was visible in his early age. He appreciated playing board games, as taking risk was his favorite challenge (Gates, Domonkos, Myhhrvold, & Rinearson, 2008). His skills and consciousness helped him develop his skills in monopolizing in a given situation. Bill had a keen interest in books since his childhood; he spent many hours searching reference books such as the encyclopedia for a specific topic to perform different kinds of research. At the age of 12, a different type of behavior of Bill Gates was more evident; this drew attention and concerns of Bill’s parents (Gates, Domonkos, Myhhrvold, & Rinearson, 2008). Bill was bored and withdrawn at times, though he was doing well at school. Bill’s parents preferred public education systems for Bill, but his behavior made his parents anxious, as they were afraid that Bills might become loner. Bill Gate’s excellence and hard work was reflected at his elementary school, as he achieved high grades in science and mathematics (Lesinski, 2009). During his schooling at Lakeside School, he was offered computer lessons. The Mother’s Club used its school’s earnings to purchase a Teletype terminal for students to use. Gates became fascinated and started discovering on what a computer could do. Bills developed a program in BASIC language through which users were able to play against other computer. His increasing interest in computers set out his meeting with Paul Allen who was two years senior to him. Both of them had a common interest in computer programming which made them fast friends (Sherman, 2000). Bill’s keen interest and knowledge in the field of computer was growing; this was reflected through his eagerness and curiosity in computer studies in school. At the age of fifteen in the year 1970, Bill Gates and Paul Allen started business. They developed “Traf-o-Data,” which was designed and developed to monitor the traffic in Seattle and predict any patterns, which were common in it. For this project, they received a good amount of $20,000 (Gates, Domonkos, Myhhrvold, & Rinearson, 2008). Slowly they both had a desire to introduce their own company, but they could not do so because Bill’s parents wanted him to become a lawyer and this is the reason why he graduated from Lakeside in 1973. He got enrolled at Harvard University with a motive to become a lawyer. But as his interest in computers and computer programs grew, Bill started spending more time in computer labs instead of attending classes. He really did not have a study schedule due to his lack of interest in becoming a lawyer. Gates was in contact with Paul and in summer 1974 Gates joined Paul who was working at Honeywell. Paul showed an article, which featured a mini computer kit - Altair 8800 to Gates. Both of them were excited about the possibilities this computer could make towards personal computing (Lesinski, 2009). The company that made Altair was named as Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS). Gates and Paul approached the company proclaiming they can develop software for the system, which would run their Altair 8800 (Lesinski, 2009). The company’s president Ed Roberts asked for a demonstration. Later on, a program was developed and Paul went to MITS labs to demonstrate the software for Altair computer and upon successful demonstration both were hired to work. In 1975, Bill Gates and Paul Allen officially formed a partnership, which was named as Microsoft and due to its monopoly in the field of software programing and its innovative ways, the company grew to what it is today. Bill Gates might be termed as a genius due to his extensive knowledge and griping on software programing. His unique innovative ideas has always paved a way out to make him lead in the market of software programing (Gates, Domonkos, Myhhrvold, & Rinearson, 2008). In addition to this, considered as the father of software programing Gates has always been smart enough to save his inventions from issues like piracy and legalized his software throughout the global markets. As mentioned before he always had a keen interest in attaining knowledge regarding computers since his childhood. Teaching of Bill’s parents to be competitive made him strong in every phase of his life always which helped Bill Gates to be at the forefront of work and to secure his rights are the foremost (Gates, Domonkos, Myhhrvold, & Rinearson, 2008). Gate’s work is a true reflection of his passion and determination (Sherman, 2000). Though Gates was in the law school but when he left the school, he started working with his friend Paul Allen who played a major role in building Gates confidence in the future possibilities in personal computing business. This assessed Gates to enhance his skills in the computing field. The reason behind such huge accomplishment is Bill Gates consistent approach, devotion and hard work towards his interest (Gates, Domonkos, Myhhrvold, & Rinearson, 2008). Gates decided to give up studying but he never gave up sitting in the computer lab, with a pursuit to understand, learn, experiment and creates software. Bill Gates is an example for those who persuaded their career without academic qualifications; perhaps a personality who was persuaded by his personal interests. These things reflect that Gates was ambitious about his work, and the environment in which he was groomed played an important role in developing his thinking capabilities and also enhanced his ability to create things (Lesinski, 2009). The business skills, which he developed, were also gained from his ability to take risks in board games, which he used to play in his childhood. But it might also be said that he has a strong business skills due to vast knowledge in his work or in other words, his research in software programming assisted him doing a successful business. Therefore, it can be concluded that Bill Gate’s life history is an example of a personality who has always been driven by his interests. It was his entrepreneurship and business skills that made his ideas and organization the leading software company in the world, which is expected to dominate this industry in the coming future as well. References List Gates, B., Domonkos, D., Myhhrvold, N., & Rinearson, P. (2008). The Road Ahead. Pearso Education . Lesinski, J. (2009). Bill Gates: Entrepreneur and Philanthropist. Minneapolis: Lener Publishing Group. Lowe, J. (2000). Bill Gates speaks : insight from the world's greatest entrepreneur. New York: John Wiley and Sons Inc. Sherman, J. (2000). Bill Gates: Computer King. New York: Millbook Press Inc. Read More