Bill Gates' Think Week - An inside view

Robert Guth of the Wall Street Journal has a fascinating article on Bill Gates’ twice-yearly solo retreats, known inside the company as “Think Week”.

During Think Week, Bill goes off by himself to small cottage armed with a collection of ideas from Microsoft employees in the form of research papers.  I remember my boss at Microsoft asking me to submit my own papers a few times, but I don’t recall that I ever did.  However, I remember reviewing material that my team was sending.

I’ve always loved the idea of a Think Week, so much so that I called a brief trip last August to a friend’s cabin my “Think Week-end”.

Does anyone do a solo vacation, without family or friends – to catch up on reading or just to think?