Great job. I really enjoyed reading your essay.

In business, the market gives you feedback in real time. Your sales figures tell you what's working, what isn't, and how you need to change. If you don't listen to the feedback, you go belly up. In philanthropy, there is no market.

In business, there's a constant focus on developing strategies, reviewing executive performance against those strategies each year, engaging with opposing or different points of view, and having intellectual dialogue.

When families save, they can get through emergencies like a bad harvest or a medical emergency. But it's more than that. They can also plan for the future, gradually saving up for a small business or for their children's school tuition.

Activities such as the BAM Minority Student Day are part of a larger Microsoft effort to provide urban high school students with exposure to the real-life experience of working in the high technology industry. Through the event, we also hope to inspire young minority students to become the information technology leaders of tomorrow.

One way to increase the impact that people can have in an organization is to give them access to the information they need. Until now, BI software has been too complex, costly, and disconnected from the software tools people use every day to do their jobs.