Jeff Raikes
Jeff Raikes
Jeffrey Scott "Jeff" Raikeswas the chief executive officer of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Until early 2008, Raikes was the President of the Microsoft Business Division and oversaw the Information Worker, Server & Tools Business and Microsoft Business Solutions Groups. He joined Microsoft in 1981 as a product manager. He retired from Microsoft in September 2008, after a transitional period, to join the Gates Foundation. Raikes is credited with driving much of Microsoft’s early work in business applications. He...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionBusinessman
Date of Birth29 May 1958
CountryUnited States of America
This acquisition advances our (business intelligence) strategy and our ability to deliver performance management applications to customers.
There are nearly 300 million PC users out there now, and so that gives us a very, very broad market. So we can put far more, you know, ten times more into R&D of the operating system, yet make it available for one-tenth or less the price.
Partners play a critical role in delivering solutions and applications to customers with the Microsoft Office System. The value of Solutions Competencies is that they enable Microsoft to deliver resources and training to partners that are meeting their customer needs. And for partners, the opportunity to highlight their expertise to customers is tremendous in the growing IW solution market.
Great job. I really enjoyed reading your essay.
There's a lot of good that's done for society in building businesses, but it's also great to be involved in those things where you can be connected to the community, to the world, and think about how you can use what you're creating, both in terms of your personal skills as well as your products or services to do good things for others.
Lawyers don't run sales forces.
I'm a person who enjoys the hands-on experience of anything I do. Get your hands dirty - that's the thing that drives and motivates me.
One of my great values that my father intuited, and indirectly taught me, is that you should always have a plan but be open to opportunity.
When families save, they can get through emergencies like a bad harvest or a medical emergency. But it's more than that. They can also plan for the future, gradually saving up for a small business or for their children's school tuition.
At Microsoft, the magic of software is used to take on very interesting challenges.
Even bad results teach you something, and you can learn your lessons and get better.
You know, being an entrepreneur is super hard work, and if you're not passionate about what you're doing, you're probably not going to succeed.
In business, the market gives you feedback in real time. Your sales figures tell you what's working, what isn't, and how you need to change. If you don't listen to the feedback, you go belly up. In philanthropy, there is no market.
In business, there's a constant focus on developing strategies, reviewing executive performance against those strategies each year, engaging with opposing or different points of view, and having intellectual dialogue.