In search of Qi Lu

I am keeping my promise which I have made earlier in one of my blogs that I will write about the things that makes Qi Lu so inspiring and productive beyond imagination. Qi Lu holds the position of the president of the online service division at Microsoft and he is the mastermind behind Bing (Microsoft’s search engine). So far Bing has been impressive and I can say it is currently the only search engine which can challenge Google. So far Bing has not done much damage to Google but it is trying very hard. Qi Lu on the other hand is Microsoft’s warrior who is leading the company’s war to gain as much as possible in the search market. Interestingly as one of the analysts said that with the kind of discipline and intellectual power Lu brings along with him he can be the one who can surely convert the pebble into the boulder.

Who is Qi Lu and what makes him indefatigable? (Select the best possible answer)

A. Lu was born in China and spend his childhood with his grand parents in the Jiangsu province which is like 5 hours away from Shanghai. Life in China was tough and Lu grew up in a very challenging environment with no electricity or running water. In one of the interviews Lu told that eating meat once in a year was considered to be a luxury. Lu completed his bachelors and masters degree in Computer Science from Fudan University in China and was teaching in the same university for a montly salary of $10.

B. One fateful weekend Lu was not able to leave the University due to the severe rainstorm and was in the dorm room when one of his colleagues requested him to attend the talk by Carnegie Mellon professor Edmund M. Clark. Lu asked some very brilliant questions during the session and Mr. Clark suggested Lu to come to the US in order to pursue a PhD from Carnegie Mellon. Post PhD Lu joined IBM as a research staff member at IBM's Almaden Research Center and after that he joined Yahoo. In Yahoo Lu lead the team of 3,000 engineers and became one of the primary person to run the search business for Yahoo.

C. Lu possess relentless work habits and according to some of his colleagues his body is not wired like you and me. Six days in a week he gets up at 3:00 am and run 4-5 miles. According to Lu running charged his batteries, as he work each day as late as 10:00 pm. He divide his work day into smaller chunks which he call ‘Qi time’ and he used that time to master various subjects that interests him. Qi Lu holds 20 US patents.

D. Lu somehow lost the faith in Yahoo and its ability to invest billions of dollars in setting up an infrastructure which is required to run and excel in the search business and because of such reasons he left Yahoo. Even on his last day at Yahoo, Lu was working till 12:00 am till his account was locked by the HR. Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer has full faith in Lu and his ability to make Bing robust and a widely accepted search engine. According to Ballmer - "Qi is the absolutely best guy on the planet to run a search business."

E. All of the above

Well according to me `E` is the correct answer and I am sure you all will agree with me on this. After reading the story of Qi Lu I reached a conclusion that there are many more Qi Lu in this World, some are waiting for the right chance, some are waiting to be found and some are waiting for that rainstorm which can change their life forever so that in turn they can change the lives of you and me and bring some drastic positive changes to this World. Keep searching….