Warren Buffett and Bill Gates talk at Columbia Business School on 2009-11-12
http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=1329393420&play=1
"I think the best place to learn ethics is in the home ... most of us get our values from what we see around us before getting to business school" -- Warren Buffett
If we already have our ethics by the time we get to school, is it ethical to empower the unethical by teaching them at the best schools? Not that we can necessarily ethically identify the unethical.
"What industry should I be in to become the next Bill Gates?" -- question from a student
Bill says Energy, Health, and Computers. I could see Energy, if you can do advances in multiple areas that combine to make Energy radically cheaper and more available. I don't see Health as he does, at least--sure curing X Y or Z disease would be big, but not as big as Microsoft was, and not making as much money for future big effects. Computers, sure, but they're partly done. I think Computers are to thought as the next huge thing is to action. Whatever that may be.
When asked about Google (how he sees it currently as being similar to Microsoft in its early days) Gates points out that they got to the top of search--a very profitable position. He gives no credit, though, for the part they played in identifying it as a profitable position while some others were focused on portals where the Internet was mapped out by "experts". We've actually been swinging back towards portals again now, but portals with more deeply integrated search and with more long-tail items represented within each portal, put there by volunteer experts. E.g., Goodreads, or Google Scholar.
The video's not *great*, it has many good moments, but the lessons were all familiar ones, and the answers were generally unsurprising. Watch a few TED talks instead.
"I think the best place to learn ethics is in the home ... most of us get our values from what we see around us before getting to business school" -- Warren Buffett
If we already have our ethics by the time we get to school, is it ethical to empower the unethical by teaching them at the best schools? Not that we can necessarily ethically identify the unethical.
"What industry should I be in to become the next Bill Gates?" -- question from a student
Bill says Energy, Health, and Computers. I could see Energy, if you can do advances in multiple areas that combine to make Energy radically cheaper and more available. I don't see Health as he does, at least--sure curing X Y or Z disease would be big, but not as big as Microsoft was, and not making as much money for future big effects. Computers, sure, but they're partly done. I think Computers are to thought as the next huge thing is to action. Whatever that may be.
When asked about Google (how he sees it currently as being similar to Microsoft in its early days) Gates points out that they got to the top of search--a very profitable position. He gives no credit, though, for the part they played in identifying it as a profitable position while some others were focused on portals where the Internet was mapped out by "experts". We've actually been swinging back towards portals again now, but portals with more deeply integrated search and with more long-tail items represented within each portal, put there by volunteer experts. E.g., Goodreads, or Google Scholar.
The video's not *great*, it has many good moments, but the lessons were all familiar ones, and the answers were generally unsurprising. Watch a few TED talks instead.