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Bill Gates is 'world's most respected business leader'
Innovation pushes tech to the top

By Jo Best

Published: Monday 22 November 2004

Tech firms are among the most respected in business today - and Bill Gates is the leader most bosses look up to, according to new research.

A survey of CEOs by the FT and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) found Bill Gates still topped the list of most respected business leaders - and he's joined in the top 10 by fellow tech bigwigs Michael Dell at five, Carly Fiorina at eight and Steve Jobs at nine. It's the third year that the Microsoft founder has headed the chart.

David Phillips, partner at PwC, said that Gates tops both for his own efforts and for Microsoft's performance.

"In the case of Bill Gates, I think he's become seen as a great leader in terms of his ability to inspire the organisation... I don't think he's a conventional business manager in any sense of the word," he said. "I think the view [of Gates as a great leader] is coloured to a certain extent by the continued performance of the company."

When asked to pick a 'fantasy board member' for their own companies, the CEOs chose figures including Churchill, Einstein and da Vinci, with the desirable qualities that the fantasy board members had listed as vision, innovation and pioneering genius.

As well as having 'respectable' leaders, the tech heavyweights are also making their presence felt on CEOs' respectability scale.

Microsoft once again comes up trumps - topping other tech titans to take the number two in the world's most respected business list, with IBM following at four, Dell at six and HP at 10.

Phillips said that in part technology's strong showing is down to its presence in people's everyday life but it's also down to the sector taking the lead in innovation.

"All those names are quite familiar in their global brand and global reach," he said. "You find in the innovation part [of the survey], those companies are up there. They dominate innovation."