It is practically an insult in Silicon Valley to say that an executive is exceedingly capable of running a company. Inventors, not great managers, are often celebrated in technology.
We imagine mad scientists bringing to life their visions of the first personal computers, software that organizes all the websites in the world, and cool electric cars. Turning an idea into a viable and sustainable business is boring by comparison.
That companies will empower entrepreneurs more than inventors is a constant fear among technologists. The concern is understandable. Innovation is essential and difficult to sustain now that technology is a huge industry.
But the fixation on one’s ingenuity above all other skills is a selective reminder of engineering history. Triumph is often the result of imagination combined with obsessive business knowledge. Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos are respected for their technical imagination, as well as for their supremacy in business strategy, marketing or their ability to unite people behind a shared mission.
Good ideas are almost never enough on their own. Strong leaders also need pragmatism and other skills beyond dreams. And the way technology is permeating everything now means that the genius tech inventor myth is standing in the way of progress.
I’ve been thinking about this as I started reading my colleague Tripp Mickle’s new book, which examines the tensions between the mind and the heart of Apple in the decade since Jobs died.
Apple CEO Tim Cook is the head – the expert in manufacturing details. Jony Ive was the design genius who helped Jobs make computers fun and shape the modern smartphone. I retired full-time from Apple in 2019 and, according to Tripp, complained that technocrats and “accountants” are sucking Apple off its soul.
This is a refrain that crops up regularly among technologists and investors who say Apple has lost its sense of product invention and creativity. There were similar complaints about Microsoft under its former CEO, Steve Ballmer, and now we sometimes hear about Google led by Sundar Pichai and Uber after its founder, Travis Kalanick, was pressured to resign in 2017. The fear is that corporate bureaucrats are gaining technical skills and heart.
Some of these are natural concerns about companies as they grow. Some of the sentiment probably reflects nostalgia for a time when tech was everything. Other than that is a selective reading of engineering history.
Celebrated inventors of Silicon Valley are often both heart and head. Jobs was a capable technologist, but above all a brilliant pitchman and brand genius. Amazon is a reflection of Bezos’ inventive ideas and his financial wizardry. Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg were more ultra-competitive business strategists than software coding masterminds. Elon Musk is a great inventor, but his SpaceX is a great business, in part because he works with operational experts, including Gwynne Shotwell.
The belief that ingenuity was the most important asset of these tech icons “obscured the core skills that made these people extraordinary,” said Margaret O’Mara, a professor at the University of Washington who studies the history of tech companies.
“The sole genius is a powerful myth because it contains a grain of truth,” she said, but it also ignores other skills and the collaboration needed to bring any idea to life. “Even Thomas Edison had a lot of people in his lab,” O’Mara said.
Tripp’s book makes it clear that Apple as we know it today wouldn’t exist without Cook and other technocrats. Developing the iPhone was a one-time feat, but it took obsessive geeks like Cook to ensure Apple could make hundreds of millions of perfect copies year after year without going bankrupt.
It is also becoming increasingly clear that the skills required for technological transformation are changing.
Technology is no longer limited to shiny Ive inventions in a cardboard box. It has become a tool to reinvent systems such as healthcare, manufacturing and transportation.
Of course, that requires a creative thinker who can come up with artificial intelligence code, virtual worlds or satellites that send internet services to Earth. But at the risk of sounding woo-woo, it also requires a curiosity about the complexity of people and the world, the ability to navigate institutional and human inertia, and the persuasion skills to evoke the collective will to create a pursue a better future. Invention is needed, but not enough.
Before we go…
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A Dramatic Day for Lyft and Uber: My colleague Kellen Browning wrote that Lyft disappointed investors with passenger numbers and warnings that the company was having trouble attracting enough on-demand drivers. Uber said it had none of those problems, but both companies’ stock prices fell today. We will continue to monitor what is happening.
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A crypto executive was not who he said he was. My colleague Ron Lieber unraveled the truth about an executive at ZenLedger, a software company, who misrepresented his academic, professional background and track record in investing.
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They are true believers in black market Birkin bags: The Cut writes about a group of people on Reddit who can afford luxury goods but are focused on buying counterfeit versions. The group, RepLadies, is “characterized by a sort of ridicule for authentic goods and a belief that buying replicas is a way to undermine and sell the system.” (A subscription may be required.)
Hug for this
The actresses Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin compare their professional accolade counts, and it’s wonderful how much fun they have together.
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