Welcome to the Unlimited Potential Blog

Microsoft Unlimited Potential (UP) was launched by Bill Gates in 2007 as a company-wide effort to bring together business and philanthropic approaches to make technology more relevant, accessible, and affordable; encouraging close collaboration among businesses, local governments, educational institutions, and community organizations.

Today, this cross-company effort is represented by 18 Microsoft programs. While each program has distinct importance and reaches unique audiences, Unlimited Potential enables us to align these programs under one common mission that can create a much greater impact.

On this blog we will share with you our efforts to bring information technology to people living in communities around the world so that they can reap real social and economic benefits. We have focused on three areas: transforming education; fostering local innovation; and enabling jobs and economic opportunity. By combining Unlimited Potential with the company’s commitment to citizenship and community investment we believe we are changing the way in which corporations and their employees can bring about positive change around the world.

Through this blog we want to enable you to follow the varied areas of our work and share with you what we are learning, which in turn helps us to progress towards our commitments. We believe that close collaboration with thousands of partners in the nonprofit community is as essential element in addressing today’s social and economic issues.

We hope to share with you our experiences as we travel around the world to different communities, meeting with our partners and learning how our investments are making a difference. We also hope to bring you voices from those communities so that together we can all learn about how we can better support and serve our society.

In that spirit we look forward to your comments, suggestions and contributions.

Akhtar Badshah

Senior Director, Community Affairs, Microsoft Corporation