Now, so I have one or two questions, being very much involved into this issue intellectually. When you preach creative capitalism or I call it sometimes corporate global citizenship, you meet very often quite some cynicism of people, people saying that's the end, I mean, you have enough arguments, the business of business is business.
Here what would you -- you mentioned already it's a reputation, it's a recognition, but what would you tell those people to go away with this wrong criticism?
BILL GATES: Well, I think that part of the problem we get into is that there are many things that are done under this label that, in fact, don't have a very large impact, and so we have to use the fact that more is going on here, and people are getting more sophisticated about it, as well as the Internet, to really gauge which are the sincere efforts that have a bit impact. So, some of the cynicism about this will be reduced as it is mapped sector by sector into more concrete activities.
We also benefit immensely that some of these breakthroughs, it doesn't take much of a change in them to make them available to the poorest. Even sometimes eventually the price just comes down, and there is the benefit there, but sometimes things get stuck because there's an assumption of expertise, there's an assumption your electricity runs all the time, and so the twists that can take it and move it out of just the upper two-thirds down to that bottom one-third may not be a very large deviation.
So, I'm not talking about some radical change; I'm talking about an evolution, and I do think the largest companies are probably the place where the real tradeoff is net positive, and that they should lead the way.
KLAUS SCHWAB: Now, very often such an engagement of business into society depends on the personal let's say characteristics of the CEO. How would you see that such a philosophy of creative capitalism is really entrenched into the genes of a corporation?
BILL GATES: Yeah, I agree that it's not something that a company is engaged in. Getting onto that path, having a CEO take a strong position and show personal excitement, be willing to take some of the really talented people in the company and give them time to learn about these needs and create special partnerships, that's a very important element to drive this forward.
But if it's done right, the self-image that people have of who they are and what their company is about will come to include this.
The slogan of Microsoft is a computer for everyone, and do we really mean for everyone? Well, yes, even though that's a very difficult thing.
So, I think it could become both inculcated and as it's more measurable over time, then you'll get the processes working on your side, and you won't need the heroic CEO time and time again.