A Nobel Prize for Steve Jobs?

“The Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded Oct. 10. It went to Christopher Sims and Thomas Sargent – two fairly obscure economists whose main work was on rational expectations theory,” Martin Hutchinson writes for Money Morning.

“That followed by five days the death of Steve Jobs, whom the Nobel Prize committee never recognized in any way,” Hutchinson writes. “That hardly seems fair, to me. ”

“Jobs made billions of dollars, built the most recognizable global brand since The Coca-Cola Co., and revolutionized the way we consume media,” Hutchinson writes. “Sims and Sargent, though certainly brilliant, hardly contributed as much.”

Hutchinson asks, “So why don’t the Nobel Prize committee award a Nobel Business Prize annually?”

Read more in the full article here.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “David B.” for the heads up.]

26 Comments

  1. Nobel prizes in economics are awarded for academic research which may or may not mirror the real life money making and wealth creation abilities of an individual. That award goes to the Forbes CEO of the year prize which by my estimation Steve Jobs would be a multi-year winner.

    1. The Nobel Prizes only goes to people who are alive at the time of their selection.

      The Nobel Prize for Economics was established long after the other prizes, and by most accounts, has Alfred Nobel spinning in his grave.

      1. It was awarded while he was still alive. You’re referring to the 2011 physics prize. He died before being conferred the award which is a whole different kettle of fish.

      2. @LynnW That’s why it was in the news, the guy died just before he was due to receive it and an exception was made.

        Noble prizes are (usually) only for the living, so the committee cannot award one or a new category of one to Steve Jobs.

  2. Nobel prize, and not just the peace prize, is mostly political and, therefore, in the long run, inconsequential.
    Case in point, Steve Jobs, who not only transformed a few industries, and dominated the world business during his tenure, but left a positive (and perhaps a lasting) impact upon humanity with his brazen notion that personal computers can empower and unlock human creativity. He worked on that vision incessantly throughout his career, making technology more accessible to more people, rendering the hooded priests of mainframe champs as niche and less powerful. This to me, is somewhat akin to Martin Luther’s making Bible accessible to the colloquial mass.

    1. Martin Luther never made the bible available to the masses. That was down to the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg whose first print run was the bible. That enabled the printing and distribution of books that could be cheaply reproduced by printing presses rather than written by hand as was the case up to the 15th century.

    1. Yes, and especially because the Nobel Prize originated from the profits of destruction (dynamite) and not creation (Mac).

      Maybe then, Bill Gates should nominated for a Nobel Prize.

      Boom!

    1. The peace category is awarded by a panel comprising of Norweigians whereas the physics, literature and economics prize is awarded by the Swedish panel. Not the same weight obviously.

      There have been many notable winners of the physics prize, chief among them Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, Hans Bethe, Richard Feynman, Julian Schwinger, Niels Bohr, Paul Dirac, Abdus Salaam, Murray Gell-Mann and many others.

  3. “So why don’t the Nobel Prize committee award a Nobel Business Prize annually?”

    Same reason the Oscars don’t have the Best CEO category – the awards are set up to recognise other fields. Jobs was as much a genius as Hutchinson is a moron.

  4. These are probably the same people who awarded Obama a Nobel. All he did at the time was travel the world reading from a tele-prompter.

    The Nobel committee completely overlooks real achievement and instead focuses on the obscure and mundane.

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