How many of the world’s top 100 billionaires really invented something new like Bill Gates did with Microsoft?

What did Bill Gates “invent” — really?

His first big hit was MS-DOS.  Which he didn’t even write.  The first version he just bought / licensed from 86-DOS.  MS-DOS.

Ditto Windows, Office, etc.  Nothing truly novel there.

And the programming languages and stuff he did before, like BASIC, et. al.?  Hardly novel.  Just making better versions of what came before.

What he did was (x) hustle like hell, (y) improve substantially on what came before, and (z) totally out-execute and then out-scale everyone else. And yes, much, much, much more.  But the “ideas” weren’t new.  The combinations and quality, perhaps.  Execution, certainly.

There are very few truly new ideas out there.  Steve Jobs / Xerox Parc.  Etc. etc.

Don’t sweat this part.

Find a way to do something 10x better than the competition, in an important or could-be-important space.  Then magic can happen.  The 10x is often the “invention.”