Concluding Thoughts

                After examining the lives of Steve Jobs and Bill gates and the values they each hold, I have reached the conclusion that both men have worked hard to build such prosperous companies, yet a large factor for their success was timing and innovation. They both did something that had never been done before, Gates with his user friendly Windows operating system, and Jobs with his visually appealing Macintosh computer. Microsoft and Apple were able to gain momentum thanks to these two men. The fact that they both dropped out of college seems to be more of a coincidence, as they both had different reasons for leaving. I believe that despite the success of Gates and Jobs, dropping out of college is not the answer and (unless circumstances are right) it is not the proper action to take to further a computer/business career. There are many students who drop out of college with the same mindset as these two, yet do not reach the same level of success Gates and Jobs did.

                As I continue to look into this idea, I may slightly alter my original thesis as I now have many questions relating to business and marketing involving Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. For instance, I’d like to know how their businesses have evolved in designing products like the fancy gadgets we use today, and what type of involvement Jobs and Gates have had in past products. I keep thinking about the list of ideas Jobs incorporates into his marketing and I would like to do more research and find examples of this in not just Apple products, but Microsoft ones as well. In finding information about these strategies, I wish to learn from them and apply them to my own life as advice for the future, but I plan to hold off on creating my own multi-million dollar company, at least until after I get in my four years at college.