- Name of Entrepreneur: Bill Gates
- Name of Business: Microsoft
- Industry: Information Technology Industry (Computer software, Computer hardware, Consumer electronics, Social networking, Service Cloud computing, Video games, Internet Corporate venture capital).
- Student Name: Shantaye Bent
- Student Number: 320017119
- Course name and Number: Introduction to Entrepreneurship MGMT2224
- Tutor’s Name: Jeanette R. M Marcelle
- Date: June 8, 2019
Introduction:
The main reason to choose Bill gates and Microsoft is because it’s a top leading IT Company and Bill gates is among the richest persons in the world. It’s an American-based company that is best known for its IT-related products and has been ruling the industry for many years. This essay is about the basic and advanced information about Microsoft and Bill gates. It includes information about the market share, the success rate, and Bill gate’s ventures in business and some future plans. This essay also includes entrepreneurial theories and shows their link with successful entrepreneurial practices.
Development:
As to state the reason about why Bill gates started Microsoft, this was a result of a project done by Bill gates and his childhood friend Paul Allen. They once seen an article in a magazine regarding Altair 8800 micro-computer and then they called MITS who are the makers of Altair. They then offered their services to write a form of new Basic Programming Language for Altair. It was also the first product sold which was the reason of the idea of starting their own company, and it was then named as Microsoft.
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The reason why Bill gates had chosen this industry was his passion. Bill gates was a computer lover as he spent most of his study time in Harvard’s computer center and he kept on improving his programming skills. Later on his friend Paul Allen also moved to Boston as well. Then Gates skipped Harvard so that both of them can continue their full-time work on their programming job. At that time, they didn’t know what to do in the future. But when they offered their services to MITS then they were crystal clear that they are going to start an IT firm.
As to talk about its revenue, it is one of the world’s largest and most successful technology companies. Its global market revenue is increasing day by day and in 2018 it was around 110 billion U.S. dollars. Its market share ratio according to different segments is as follows:
- Productivity Business Processes—29.22%
- Intelligent Cloud—27.3%
- More personal computing—43.47%
2018 Calculations
Gross profit margin = 100 × Gross margin ÷ Revenue = 100 × 72,007 ÷ 110,360 = 65.25%
Initially, Microsoft has founded to focus on programming and Basic in particular. it pivoted as an opportunity provided by igetting into operating systems. Then it went from a non-graphical operating system to a graphical operating system. Both of these provided 80 to 90% of their revenue. Almost all of that was domestic.
Only a tiny portion of the revenue is from OS and Office. This is a huge pivot. However, the business depends on those remaining, even if revenue is not directly from those products.
Microsoft generates significant revenue from its aspect of cloud computing, and servers, and is not abandoning its programming platforms.
Given that they no longer have a single product that generates a majority of their revenue, they are diversified. This has some strengths and weaknesses. Apple made it big with a single focus: phones, after decades of stumbling and focusing on computers. They are now huge. Being dominant in one product can lead to a lot of revenue. However, it has the danger of being a one-legged stool, it can fall over. Apple realizes this and is changing. Microsoft is already here (diversification).
Short Term future: Microsoft is well poised to continue growing in the areas it is working on. Cloud Computing will continue to grow. Even if Amazon’s share remains the same, there is growth there. I suspect that Microsoft and Google’s share will grow, as the meaning and use of cloud computing evolve.
Ignoring the iOS on mobile, Microsoft is pretty well poised to grow here, partially back to Cloud and also with mind share of products. Their office suite is now available on the cloud and on mobile devices, all for free.
Partnerships remain fairly strong with the developer communities and business communities.
Mid-Term:
Microsoft has NOT completely figured out mobile. Multiple times they have (for instance) abandoned casual games. Casual (mobile) games continue to evolve. They are a $70 BILLION dollar industry. Now, with mobile games now a bigger percentage than desktop games. The focus on Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality is a good one. They do need to figure out the killer app but it may be that the killer app is a suite of products, inter-related.
Microsoft’s innovation management framework is designed to help other companies develop a comprehensive, integrated approach to implement and support an innovation management strategy. The framework includes best practice processes and solutions that offer a strategic roadmap. It offers techniques that are proven through experience to improve the quality of the innovation as well as the innovation management performance.
The five basic framework components focus on five main innovation sub-processes:
- Envision: The Envision process should put in place the strategy and plan to achieve the innovation goals in the business strategy.
- Engage: The key in the engagement process is to get closer to the customer, what they desire, how they will make their lives better, and how your product will displace something.
- Evolve: The third process, Evolve, takes the output of the Engage process to the next level. In this process, companies evolve ideas as individuals or as teams to increase their quality and value.
- Evaluate: It’s important to be able to organize, de-duplicate, and merge ideas and take them to the next step in order to turn ideas into money.
- Execute: The Execute sub-process takes the input from the previous processes and executes a formal project to further develop the idea or commercialize it.
The major decisions taken by bill gates are as follows:
- The decision to divorce IBM.
- The company didn’t merge with any other and it remained itself around windows and office.
- The decision to have consumer-focused windows.
- His best decision was to broaden the company from a desktop-oriented company to an enterprise-Company.
The Challenges Bill gates had to overcome are as follows:
- When Macintosh’s (introduced by Apple) graphical user interface was introduced and was easy to use than Microsoft’s MS-Dos and it threatened to make Microsoft’s program obsolete. This was a very severe threat to which Bill gates responded so quickly and that was the announcement of Microsoft that they are developing their own graphical user interface (GUI) based operating system which was called as Windows. It was claimed as a rip-off of the Macintosh operating system and Apple sued Microsoft. The case was then dragged until the mid of 1990s when the courts finally decided that Apple’s suit had no merit.
Conclusion:
To conclude the topic, we can say that Bill gates have achieved so much with his hard work and dedication. The main reason to choose Bill gates and Microsoft is because it’s a top leading IT Company and Bill gates is among the richest persons in the world. This essay is about the basic and advanced information about Microsoft and Bill gates.
As to state the reason about why Bill gates started Microsoft, this was a result of a project done by Bill gates and his childhood friend Paul Allen. It was also the first product sold which was the reason for the idea of starting their own company, and it was then named Microsoft.
The reason why Bill gates had chosen this industry was his passion. Bill gates is a computer freak as he spent most of his study time in Harvard’s computer center and he kept on improving his programming skills. Its market share ratio according to different segments is as follows:
- Productivity Business Processes—29.22%
- Intelligent Cloud—27.3%
- More personal computing—43.47%
Initially, Microsoft was founded to focus on programming and BASIC in particular. Microsoft generates significant revenue from their aspect of cloud computing, servers, and not abandoning their programming platforms. I suspect that Microsoft and Google’s share will grow, as the meaning and use of cloud computing evolve.
Ignoring the OS on mobile, Microsoft is pretty well poised to grow here, partially back to Cloud and also with mind share of products. Their office suite is now available on the cloud and on mobile devices, all for “free.” They continue to be the de facto standard for Office products (I am not claiming superiority, that would be a different discussion, but rather mind share and positioning). I suspect that MEDICAL will be this area and focus and Microsoft has some business units strongly focused on medical.
When Macintosh’s (introduced by Apple) graphical user interface was introduced and was easy to use than Microsoft’s MS-Dos and it threatened to make Microsoft’s program obsolete. This was a very severe threat to which Bill gates responded so quickly and that was the announcement of Microsoft that they are developing their own graphical user interface (GUI) based operating system which was called Windows. It was claimed as a rip-off of the Macintosh operating system and Apple sued Microsoft.
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