Steve Jobs: Resign in Peace

I reacted to Karl Denninger's inexplicable rips at Steve Jobs at this comment at another post this morning.

My summary there: “… to deny Jobs his rightful place in the business pantheon is crazy. Yes, he is/was an annoying jerk in many ways. No, he's not Einstein, but he is/was one of the most imaginative, innovative, market-savvy guys we've ever seen, or ever will see.”

I would also add that Jobs probably got breaks he didn't deserve from the SEC several years ago. (Update, 8 p.m.: Commenter Greg also reminded me that Jobs in his later years engaged in uncalled-for censorship at Apple's iTunes and App stores; hopefully, the company will abandon these efforts, but I'm not optimistic. I've long thought that for all his brilliance, a guy like Jobs with real political power would be a very dangerous man indeed.)

People who live in Greater Cincinnati may remember a parody campaign on a local FM station many years ago. It “advertised” mythical products and services, like the Negative-Calorie Cookie; McMaisonette (a fast-food version of a local 5-star restaurant); and the “Encephalographic Printout Device,” which would print out your thoughts while you slept so as not to lose brilliant overnight insights. The tag line of the fictitious firm, Brute Force Cybernetics (BFC), meant to be a poke at capitalism in general, was that it was “the company that creates a need, and then fills it.”

At National Review, the American Enterprise Institute's Nick Schulz understands how BFC's sarcasm, though genuinely humorous and unfortunately descriptive of the mindset of many who incorrectly see themselves as entrepreneurs, was off the mark in regards to Jobs. In the information and services age, truly great entrepreneurs like Jobs recognize a need or want (even if the public doesn't yet recognize it), and figure out how to meet it:

Jobs is a great entrepreneur for another reason. Lots of ninnies can give customers products they want. Jobs gave people products they didn't know they wanted, and then made those products indispensable to their lives.

I didn't know I needed the ability to read the Wall Street Journal and The Corner on a handsome handheld device at my breakfast table, on the Metro, on the Acela, or in any Starbucks I entered. But Steve Jobs did. I didn't know I wanted to mix and match my music collection on a computer and take it with me wherever I went, but Steve Jobs did. I didn't know I wanted a portable multimedia platform that would permit me and my kids to hurl angry birds out of a slingshot at thieving pigs. But Steve Jobs did.

All those successes were made possible by failure after failure after failure and the lessons learned from those failures.

Examples of failure Schulz cited include the pre-floppy disk Apple I and Apple II; the “Lisa,” the pre-Mac GUI computer which had a 3.5″ drive from which one could not manually eject an inserted disk; and Jobs's attempt at his own company, NeXT Computer, “which was a big nothing-burger of a company.” He didn't mention a couple of other biggies: the MessagePad and the Newton (think of very primitive PalmPilots).

Schulz also imparts an important and much larger lesson (bolds are mine):

There's a moral here for a Washington culture that fears failure too much. In today's Washington, large banks aren't permitted to fail; nor are large auto firms. Next up will be too-big-to-fail hospital systems. Steve Jobs is a reminder that failure is a good and necessary thing. And that sometimes the greatest glories are born of catastrophe.

I would rephrase Schulz's contention to read that Washington fears officially recognizing and carrying through with the consequences of what everyone else clearly sees as failure.

Robert X. Cringely, who probably correctly pegs Jobs as “the greatest CEO of our time” (Jobs indeed may have created more wealth in the form of shareholder value than any CEO in history) has a great write-up at InfoWorld. Read the whole thing, and thank your lucky stars that Jobs didn't listen to any of Cringely “don't do it” suggestions.