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An article in the June 18, 2007 issue of TIME entitled, “Bill Gates Goes Back to School” by Lev Grossman, highlights Bill Gates’ commencement address to recent Harvard graduates and his acceptance of an honorary degree to the school he dropped out of to eventually co-found Microsoft.  The speech notes his plans t0 leave Microsoft in 2008 and become a full-time philanthropist, directing his efforts to improve global education and global health through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Follow the first link to the TIME article and the second to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation website for a transcript of his commencement speech - both worth a read.

Gates’ explains during the speech his one big regret about leaving Harvard: “I left Harvard with no real awareness of the awful inequities in the world—the appalling disparities of health, and wealth, and opportunity that condemn millions of people to lives of despair.”  He cites the millions of young people lacking educational opportunities in America, and the millions living in “unspeakable poverty and disease” around the world.  It took him decades to understand the complexity of injustice around the globe, he comments.

At Harvard, Gates took great interest in new discoveries concerning economics, politics, and advances in the sciences.  However, as he realizes now, humanity’s greatest achievements emerge as a result of our ability to apply new discoveries to reduce inequality, such as on issues of democracy, quality health care, and broad economic opportunity.

As a promoter of capitalism, an economic system contributing to his wealth and success at Microsoft, Gates acknowledges the limitations on the system to help the greater good.  During his commencement speech, Gates introduces an idea he calls “creative capitalism.”  Creative capitalism means finding ways to use the market forces to create profit, or at least a living, for more people to serve those suffering from the worst inequalities.   He explains, “If we can find approaches that meet the needs of the poor in ways that generate profits for business and votes for politicians, we will have found a sustainable way to reduce inequity in the world.”

Much like Al Gore as I noted in “Let’s Get Political,” Gates points to the accelerating technologies and information available to today’s college graduates.  Now more than ever we can come to recognize, understand, confront, and solve the problems of disparity at home and abroad.  Gates notes, “You graduates are coming of age in an amazing time. As you leave Harvard, you have technology that members of my class never had. You have awareness of global inequity, which we did not have. And with that awareness, you likely also have an informed conscience that will torment you if you abandon these people whose lives you could change with very little effort…For a few hours every week, you can use the growing power of the Internet to get informed, find others with the same interests, see the barriers, and find ways to cut through them.”

Bill Gates, cited as the wealthiest human being on the planet for over a decade by Forbes magazine, could easily ignore the great inequalities of the world and swim in his billions of dollars.  But Gates has a conscience.  The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has an endowment of more than $33 billion, making it by far the largest charitable foundation in the world, and last year close friend Warren Buffet committed to eventually adding an additional $30 billion (Grossman).  The magnitude of wealth he has acquired and full-time efforts he will dedicate to closing the gap between the rich and the poor in the United States and between first and third world countries provides a model for the youth of the world to follow.  Gates began as an entrepreneur, worked to become wildly successful both in advancing the field of technology and growing a colossal fortune, and now finds his greatest regret in failing to recognize how to use his knowledge, access, and privilege to reduce inequality. 

His speech serves as a reminder to consider the global market and community, in which we all now participate, when designing your career path.  Through technology we all have the ability and opportunity to affect positive change on a global level.