Gates is thought of-fairly-as a ruthless businessman-driven
by data, intolerant of incompetence, competitive to a fault.
Yet there's another aspect to his psyche that prizes knowledge.
In addition to chairman Gates, he can be professor Gates,
knowing that he didn't know what he didn't know-and then
attempting to master a field, be it world health policy or education
reform at the Gates Foundation these days, or PC operating
systems and antitrust defenses back when he was running
Microsoft day to day. Think Week offered him the opportunity
to immerse himself. We all have stacks of memos, articles,
manuscripts, that haunt our offices and studies-the Perilous
Piles or Towers of Doom. Think Week was Gates' way of taking
them on, in a way that an occasional product-brainstorming
session never could do.