Will there be another Steve Jobs? Absolutely, there has to be!
Mashable asked this question yesterday. It’s a good read. They put the question to a number of industry insiders, technologists and entrepreneurs. Their answers were varied and interesting.
After reading it, I wanted to take a shot at the question myself. Mainly because I thought it was a good question and I have a little different take on it.
The key gift of Steve Jobs wasn’t his products, his innovative genius, or attention to detail. Steve Jobs’ gift was how he changed our lives; the way we think, and the way we communicate through his innovation and products. Steve Jobs true legacy was the IMPACT he left on society and that is why there will ABSOLUTELY be another Steve Jobs.
The world requires people like Steve Jobs. The world would come to a screeching halt if it weren’t for people like Jobs. Many have been comparing Steve to Einstein and Edison. I think a better comparison is Henry Ford. What Ford did for the automotive industry is far more akin to what Jobs has done for software and hardware. Just as now, it would have been easy to ask the question then, if there would ever be another Henry Ford, Albert Einstien or Thomas Edison. For most at the time, the easy answer would have been no. No, unfortunately, robs us or our confidence and self-esteem as a people. There have always been more Einsteins, Thomas Edisons, Henry Fords, Ghandis, MKLs and Jobs and there will continue to be. The world is very capable of creating more greatness. It’s as sure a thing as E=MC2. The trend will continue.
Bill Gates, is he a Steve Jobs? Just the suggestion, makes many grimace. But why? What if Bill had died in 1994, smack in the middle of the PC revolution. Would we have been asking the same question of Bill? Let’s remember, Apple made a horrific strategic blunder by combining the operating system with the hardware. It virtually wiped them out for 15 years. No one was thinking about Apple in 1994. Would we be ready for the iPad, the iPod, the iPhone, without 15 years of PC use? Is it safe to say that without Gates enabling 15 years of the world marinating in the PC and the PC’s access to the Internet the table may not have been set for Jobs?
Mashable asked this question:
Could there ever be another person capable of profoundly changing the world through software and hardware design as Jobs has done?
When it comes to Jobs, this is the wrong question. It assumes that changing the world through software and hardware design is what the world is going to need again. Jobs greatness wasn’t changing the world through software and hardware design, it was the fact that he changed the world, period. It was his timing. The world needed to be changed by software and hardware design. If the world requires that type of change again, there will be another Steve Jobs.
Henry Ford changed the world by creating the Model T. It revolutionized transportation. It was what the world needed at the time. Has there been another Henry Ford who profoundly changed the world through automotive manufacturing and distribution? NO! Has there been a need, not yet. (Side note, I think we are getting close and may see the next Henry Ford come out of the electric car world)
Steve Jobs changed the world at a time when the world needed it. So did Bill Gates, Henry Ford, Albert Einstein,Thomas Edison, Eli Whitney, Ghandi, and Martin Luther King. Will there be another person capable of substantially changing the world through software and hardware as Jobs as done? If the world requires it, YES! If not, NO! Will there be another person who changes the world? YES! We require it. Knowing this is to be true is calming.
Will there be another Steve Jobs? Steve was one of a kind and we all benefitted from him. I certainly did. I’m typing this on a MacBook Pro, reading the Mashable post on my iPad and listening to iTunes on my iPhone. The Steve Jobs has passed and therefore he can not exist again. Thanks to him he leaves a legacy for others to change the world.
Related articles
- Who Will Be the ‘Next Steve Jobs’? (allthingsd.com)
- Steve Jobs another Thomas Edison or Henry Ford? Maybe not. (csmonitor.com)
