[Discuss] Econonomic contribution

[tmetro-blu at vl.com (Tom Metro)]

markw at mohawksoft.com wrote:
> How much of "Jobs'" accomplishments were his own? I argue none.
>
> I submit that all his accomplishments were purely the work of a
> collaborative process. Yes, he chose the final versions, but he never
> made any of it. He never drew something out and said "Make this."
> Very creative people created designs, and as Jobs was presented
> designs, he took their creativity and made it his own. He learned
> more from the designers than the designers learned from him. Ritchie
> on the other hand, did all the things he did, first hand.

Richard Pieri wrote:
> Then I suggest making a fair comparison.  To wit, your dismissal of
> The Steve's perceived lack of creativity because of his genuine lack
> of technical expertise is unfair.

I agree with Richard here. Mark seems to be judging Jobs'
accomplishments from the perspective of engineering, but he wasn't an
engineer.

As technical people we may respect the non-technical fields less, but
they are still an essential part of any successful product.

I think you'd be hard pressed to name anyone from the last 50 years who
made substantial contributions to their industry in the absence of a
collaborative process.

Having a great gadget that either 1. no one knows about, 2. never gets
funded and built, or 3. has such bad usability that few want to use it,
is not a great accomplishment, even if you did conceive of it and build
a prototype all by yourself.


markw at mohawksoft.com wrote:
> It is a mixture of character and circumstance. It is not certain that 
> either Jobs or Ritchie, outside of the circumstances of their life, 
> would have been so accomplished. 

I'm sure not many fans of Bill Gates here, but in interviews he was
always quick to credit his circumstances for much of his success (and
thus why he now funds educational programs).


> The question is, and has always been, despite the digression, who
> contributed more to the industry as a whole. The guy who, in very 
> general and simplistic terms, created the environment or a salesman
> who contributed to making it pretty?

Unless you come up with some objective criteria to quantify the
contributions, this will largely come down to your biases for
engineering or business.

About 11 minutes into episode 322 of This Week In Tech[1] they touch on
this topic, and conclude it is the popularizer of the technology that
gets the credit in the history books, not the inventor.

1. http://twit.tv/show/this-week-in-tech/322

 -Tom

-- 
Tom Metro
Venture Logic, Newton, MA, USA
"Enterprise solutions through open source."
Professional Profile: http://tmetro.venturelogic.com/