A Conversation with Bill Gates

As his full-time job at Microsoft comes to an end, Gates opens up about his future role at the company and what he'll miss the most

Perhaps no business leader is more iconic and better-known worldwide than William H. Gates III. He helped pioneer an industry, became one of the world's wealthiest men along the way, and subsequently launched the biggest philanthropic foundation ever. As he steps back from his full-time work at Microsoft (MSFT) on June 27 to devote the bulk of his time to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, an era ends as well.

Gates isn't prone to sentimentality. He struggles at trying to determine his own legacy. In many ways, he's more comfortable talking about the one day a week he'll continue to work at Microsoft. In a conversation with BusinessWeek Seattle Bureau Chief Jay Greene, Gates talked about what he'll continue to do at the company, as well as how he will miss working alongside his friend, Microsoft CEO Steven A. Ballmer. Edited excerpts of their conversation follow:

You've witnessed so much change in technology since starting Microsoft. What are the next big breakthroughs?
Well, the most important breakthroughs are those whose work has been going on in labs, including Microsoft Research, for more than a decade. The idea of a computer that can see and watch your gestures, and know who you are, that can understand your speech—all that leads to a very interactive environment where your desk is an intelligent surface. Your whiteboard is an intelligent surface. We're seeing glimpses of that. It's amazing that today we are so keyboard- and mouse-oriented. All those new ways of interacting, from ink to speech to vision, will get into the mainstream in the next decade. I would say that's the single thing that's the most dramatic. If you walk into this office 10 years from now, you'll say: "They just wrote stuff up on that board, and they just laid the papers out on the desk. That's really weird."

You've been bullish on the natural-user interface for years. With this shift, what role will you play in helping the company address those kinds of opportunities in the future?
Well, the interest in those investments and the incredible progress we've made are not at all confined to me. The great people in Microsoft Research, and in Office, and the other groups are full speed ahead on those things. Steve may ask me to look in on some particular projects to help spur them on, because he knows I love the stuff. But I don't think that's a necessary thing. These are among the big, big, big bets that over the past 10 years we've had a lot of people working on.

Does the fact that you love the stuff suggest it will be something you will play a future role in?
It means there's a chance. Steve and [chief technical officers] Ray [Ozzie] and Craig [Mundie] will just have to decide which things. Do they pick things that are going super well, and have me push them even more? Do they take things that are in trouble and have me help out with those? They get to decide, and I love software pretty broadly, I've got history with all the different projects. The only one that's known for sure, that's actually laid out in a very concrete way, is how I'll continue to help the search team.