Call Bill Gates if Your Country Crosses One Billion Population

Microsoft has four major R&D centres across the world. If Microsoft at Redmond is a well known R&D center, others are located in Europe (in Cambridge, UK), India and China . While US and UK R&D centers were setup for obvious reasons, India and China centres were set up for a special reason - size of those two countries' populations!!!

Gates said at an Innovation Day event in Brussels that "It is the size of those two countries'(India and China) populations which made the choice of location an easy decision."

"Basically, wherever there is one billion people, we are putting in a research centre," said Gates. "When people ask me, 'When are you going to put the next one into my country?' I say, 'When you have a billion people, give me a call.'"

The sheer number of well-educated people entering the workforce in those countries means the rate of innovation will soar, he said.

So, to see a Microsoft R&D center in your country, wait till one billion population mark.