Software Notebook: How does Gates shape up as a seer?
Bill Gates has recently been prognosticating all over the place, offering his thoughts on the future of newspapers, television, advertising, communications, telephones and many other areas of business and technology. — But how good are his predictions, really?
Context & Ripple Effects
Spring 2007 has been a heavy prognostication season for Bill Gates. Within ten days in May alone, he keynoted Microsoft's Strategic Account Summit on May 9 — making the case for Microsoft's ad business while conceding how hard the shift to Internet advertising is — and opened WinHEC 2007 on May 16 calling it 'a very important conference.' Layered on top are confirmed public forecasts spanning newspapers, television, advertising, communications and telephones, going back to his January comments on the PS3 and Wii.
First-order effects
- Gates's forecasts do double duty as Microsoft positioning: his ad-business remarks ahead of the summit, where Microsoft planned to unveil a new communications product aimed at small businesses, frame the company's expansion into Internet advertising as inevitable rather than speculative.
- His January claims — that the Wii's novelty could wear off without strong graphics and that the PS3 will never hold a graphics advantage over Xbox 360 — set the terms of the console debate on Xbox-friendly ground before competitors respond.
Second-order effects
- Nintendo and Sony find themselves arguing against a narrative as much as a product spec sheet: when the industry's most quoted chairman publicly doubts the Wii's staying power, press amplification gives Microsoft reach into gaming conversations it does not have to buy.
- Publishers and broadcasters become both audience and target — Gates's predictions about their industries arrive from a company building an ad business to monetize exactly that content, so every forecast doubles as a signal of where Microsoft intends to compete next.
Third-order effects
- As founder-voices become standing industry oracles, prediction hardens into a strategic instrument: platforms pre-legitimize their next market entries by forecasting them, and readers of such forecasts must increasingly discount them for the speaker's commercial stake.
The trend: Founder prognostication is shifting from commentary to competitive strategy, with platform chiefs using future-of-the-industry speeches to pre-position their companies' expansions.