Leadership

1. Bill Gates:

A Visionary Leader: Traits

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, granted he is an unusually hard-driving and successful businessman.

A 1968 photo shows Bill as a rapt young teenager, watching his friend Paul Allen type at a computer terminal. Allen became a co-founder of Microsoft. The child Gates has neat hair and an eager, pleasant smile; every last detail says "pat me on the head." He entered Harvard but dropped out to found Microsoft in 1975.

Microsoft's first product was a version of the programming language BASIC for the Altair 8800, arguably the world's first personal computer. BASIC, invented by John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz in 1964, was someone else's idea. So was the Altair. Gates merely plugged one into the other, cream-cheesed the waiting bagel and came up with a giant hit.

The world pondered Gates and assumed he must be a great thinker. During World War II, Cargo Cults flourished on New Guinea and Melanesia: people who had never seen an airplane pondered incoming U.S. aircraft and assumed they must be divine. Technology is confusing, and these were reasonable guesses under the circumstances. In 1995 Gates published a book called "The Road Ahead." Peering far into the future, he glimpsed a technology-rich dreamworld where you will be able to "watch Gone With the Wind," he wrote, "with your own face and voice replacing Vivien Leigh's or Clark Gable's." Apparently this is just what the public had been dying to do, for "The Road Ahead" became a runaway best seller, though it is lustrous with earnest goofiness, like a greased-down haircut.

And when overlooking Gates' basic decency we find that he has repeatedly been offered a starring role in the circus freak show of American Celebrity, Julius Caesar being offered the Emperor's crown by clamorous sycophants. He has turned it down. He does not make a habit of going on TV to pontificate, free-associate or share his feelings. His wife and young child are largely invisible to the public, which represents a deliberate decision on the part of Mr. and Mrs.

If postwar America of the 1950s and '60s democratized middle-classiness, Gates has democratized filthy-richness -- or has at least started to. Get the right job offer from Microsoft, work hard, get rich; no miracle required. Key Microsoft employees pushed Gates in this direction, but he was willing to go, and the industry followed. The Gates Road to Wealth is still a one-laner, and traffic is limited. Gates has created lots and has been willing to share.

Today Gates, grown very powerful and great, sits at the center of world technology like an immense frog eyeing insect life on the pond surface, now and then consuming a tasty company with one quick dart of the tongue.

As for Gates himself, he is a visionary leader; he is a technology groupie with a genius for showing up, for