Magazine content is available exclusively for TIME subscribers.BILL GATES: Software Strongman
If we are talking creativity and ideas, Bill Gates is an American unoriginal. He is Microsoft's chief and co-founder, he is the world's richest man, and his career delivers this message: It can be wiser to follow than to lead. Let the innovators hit the beaches and take the losses; if you hold back and follow, you can clean up in peace and quiet.
Gates is the Bing Crosby of American technology, borrowing a tune here and a tune there and turning them all into great boffo hits--by dint of heroic feats of repackaging and sheer Herculean blandness. Granted he...
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