Depois de Steve Jobs fazer história com o famoso discurso aos graduandos de Stanford em 2005, chegou a hora do seu maior rival nos negócios virar notícia no meio acadêmico.

Na última quinta feira Bill Gates recebeu o diploma honorário de doutor em direito da universidade de Harvard. O seu discurso foi cheio de frases bem humoradas e lições de vida. Logo no início ele diz ser uma “má influência”, primeiro por ter largado a faculdade, depois, por ter incentivado Steve Ballmer, atual presidente da Microsoft, a fazer o mesmo. Em outro ponto ele justifica o motivo de ter sido convidado somente para falar durante a festa de graduação, dizendo: “Se eu tivesse falado durante a sua orientação, poucos de vocês estariam aqui hoje”.

O resultado final foi um discurso muito interessante que vale a pena ser assistido e estudado (eu me refiro ao Inglês). Segue abaixo o vídeo com a primeira parte do discurso e a respectiva transcrição em Inglês:

President Bok, former President Rudenstine, incoming President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, parents, and especially, the graduates:

I’ve been waiting more than 30 years to say this: “Dad, I always told you I’d come back and get my degree.”

I want to thank Harvard for this timely honor. I’ll be changing my job next year … and it will be nice to finally have a college degree on my résumé.

I applaud the graduates today for taking a much more direct route to your degrees. For my part, I’m just happy that the Crimson has called me “Harvard’s most successful dropout.” I guess that makes me valedictorian of my own special class … I did the best of everyone who failed.

But I also want to be recognized as the guy who got Steve Ballmer to drop out of business school. I’m a bad influence. That’s why I was invited to speak at your graduation. If I had spoken at your orientation, fewer of you might be here today.

Harvard was just a phenomenal experience for me. Academic life was fascinating. I used to sit in on lots of classes I hadn’t even signed up for. And dorm life was terrific. I lived up at Radcliffe, in Currier House. There were always lots of people in my dorm room late at night discussing things, because everyone knew I didn’t worry about getting up in the morning. That’s how I came to be the leader of the antisocial group. We clung to each other as a way of validating our rejection of all those social people.

Radcliffe was a great place to live. There were more women up there, and most of the guys were science-math types. That combination offered me the best odds, if you know what I mean. This is where I learned the sad lesson that improving your odds doesn’t guarantee success.

One of my biggest memories of Harvard came in January 1975, when I made a call from Currier House to a company in Albuquerque that had begun making the world’s first personal computers. I offered to sell them software.

I worried that they would realize I was just a student in a dorm and hang up on me. Instead they said: “We’re not quite ready, come see us in a month,” which was a good thing, because we hadn’t written the software yet. From that moment, I worked day and night on this little extra credit project that marked the end of my college education and the beginning of a remarkable journey with Microsoft.

Assista o restante do discurso aqui: Parte 1 - Parte 2 - Parte 3 - Parte 4

Transcrição completa do discurso de Bill Gates aqui: www.networkworld.com

I hope you like it!