Microsoft was working on e-books and tablet PCs a decade ago. So why did it never get around to releasing them? Why, with so many intelligent and talented employees, is it falling behind Apple in innovation? Dick Brass, who was a Microsoft vice president for seven years, explains how Microsoft’s lack of systems that support innovation lead to risk-avoidance and internal struggles that crush great ideas before they ever make it into the marketplace.

Read the article at the New York Times.

Creative Capitalism: A Conversation hosts a series of responses by famous individuals, including Warren Buffet, Gary Becker, and Robert Reich, to a speech Bill Gates gave before the World Economic Forum in January 2008 in Davos, Switzerland. In that speech, Gates argued for a “new system [of] creative capitalism – an approach where governments, businesses, and nonprofits work together to stretch the reach of market forces so that more people can make a profit, or gain recognition, doing work that eases the world’s inequities.”