I’d like to get a debate going and I’d like to have your views.
Two of the greatest technological and entrepreneurial leaders of this age are Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, but how will we remember them in terms of their legacy of leadership and entrepreneurship? Who will we remember in years to come for their legacy to future generations?
Gates has the advantage of still having time to shape his legacy, whereas Jobs’s deeds are now cast in stone and open to interpretation. Maybe it’s a little unfair to set this up as a boxing match between two entrepreneurial heavyweights, but my question was inspired by the comments of best-selling Canadian author and speaker, Malcolm Gladwell.
Jobs: The 'Tweaker'
In an article in the New Yorker, Gladwell said that Jobs was more of a ‘tweaker’, rather than a true innovator and visionary. He argues that Jobs didn’t invent the graphical user interface (GUI) and the mouse, instead he took the ideas from the Xerox research center at Palo Alto (PARC). He also didn’t invent the iPod, he waited until early MP3 technology had been tested and developed elsewhere and then launched his own device. Gladwell says of Jobs:
"Every single idea he ever had, came from somebody else. And he would be the first to say this. He would also take credit for things. He was shameless. He was an extraordinarily brilliant businessman and entrepreneur. He was also a self-promoter on a level that we have rarely seen.
Gates: The Philanthropist
Gates, on the other hand, would be remembered for his charitable work and the fact that he has established the Gates Foundation with billions of his own money, claiming that there would be statues of him across the Third World, not for his entrepreneurship or leadership, but because his money is likely to fund a cure for malaria.
In Defence of Jobs
Defending Jobs, the Forbes columnist, Frederick Allen, argues that Gladwell gets the nature of invention and Job’s achievements wrong. According to Allen, if you use Gladwell’s definition, then all of greatest inventions are tweaks: Ford didn’t invent the automobile; the Wright brothers didn’t invent flying; and there were a number of light bulbs before Edison’s.
What Jobs did was to build a better device for the storing and retrieval of music and he also built an ecosystem to support it, with the iTunes platform. As for the mouse and the GUI, Steve Jobs biographer, Walter Isaacson, points out how limited the developments were that PARC had made and that the Apple team brought the whole desktop dream to reality, enabling things to be dragged, dropped, resized and manipulated, like never before.
So what do you think: will we remember Gates for his charitable work and Jobs as an innovator and visionary? What do you think will be their legacy in 50 years’ time?
Will Trevor is the Founder and Training Consultant at Windsor Training. Please click 'Follow' if you would like to hear more from Will in the future. Feel free to also connect via his Linkedin page, or via Twitter and Facebook or email: will.trevor@windsortraining.net
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