There's no way I could bring myself to do that. Between that, "My grandson is SO SMART he built his own computer from SCRATCH! You should hire him!" and "My niece is having open heart surgery and my cousin just lost her job" stories, I refuse to believe he doesn't take medicine to keep from falling asleep when people talk about spending his money.
There needs to be a term for the kind of agenda-less company founded by those with nothing to prove and no personal need for enrichment. "Sandbox corporation?"
Personally, I like the "Sandbox" notion (but maybe that's because I recently set up a company like that for myself, and hadn't thought of that term to describe it....)
Fascinating... I'm definitely interested in seeing what comes out of that "think tank." I also agree with the "Sandbox Corporation" classification... maybe shortened to "Sand Corp" or just "Sandy"....
Personally, I think its likely to turn into something like an incubator for businesses that are in Gate's area of interest (such as those areas the Gates Foundation focuses on, only for-profit). Then again, maybe I'm just hoping... =P
Ever have one of those moments where you thought "wouldn't it be cool if someone made/built/offered X?" bgC3 is where Bill Gates can do a brain dump of all his ideas and have some smart people try and make them.
Has this ever worked? I'm not being facetious - I just can't think of any good examples where one "idea person" has dumped ideas on a bunch of smart people and good things have come out of it.
Nathan Myhrvold and Intellectual Ventures? Not sure if that's quite what you're looking for, but it's the first thing that came to mind. It's not exactly "good" in a "for mankind" kind of sense, but apparently it makes boatloads of money.