“My recent post refuting the canard-y contention that Steve Jobs didn’t really invent anything drew some passionate and insightful comments from readers that are well worth sharing,” Bob Evans writes for Forbes.
“Quick review: on the web site AllThingsD.com, Erik Hesseldahl has an article about an interview he conducted with tech-industry pundit Mark Anderson about the latter’s 10 big predictions for 2012,” Evans recounts. “In the course of that interview, Anderson at one point says, ‘Steve Jobs didn’t really invent anything at all. But he was great at integrating things into a product.'”
“My reaction to that can be conveyed in a paraphrase of a Charles Dickens line: if that’s the definition of “invent,” then that definition is a ass,” Evans writes. “A number of readers agreed with my disagreement… Reader ‘toyboat’ went far back into the annals of creativity to offer this anecdote about the fuzzy line Anderson was trying to straddle: ‘By logical extension, the person who invented the first lever was just integrating rocks and trees that were already there!'”
Much more, including Da Vinci and Edison, in the full article here.
Related article:
‘Steve Jobs didn’t really invent anything.’ Really? – December 12, 2011
It takes a lot of rehearsing to be yourself- Wm Saroyan (1937)
Anyone who believes that “invention” is the act of pulling some fully-formed innovation directly out of one’s ass does not have much familiarity with the history of inventions.
An entertaining antidote to that lack of understanding is James Burke’s still-entertaining 1970s TV series “Connections” and his later series “The Day The Universe Changed.”
Yes, James Burke’s “Connections” series is pertinent, and a great series. I was always intrigued by the way he tended to postscript statements with a question.
Or did he?
He did, didn’t he?
Truly a great series (and book). Worth seeking out even after all that’s happened over the intervening years. Wouldn’t you agree?
I would agree.
Or…..
Jobs only invented the way to move a company in a fragmented hardware industry into a huge success as a vertically integrated software and hardware giant.
What invention?
Garry Kasparov didn’t invent chess, either, but he changed the game. And he said this:
Ultimately, what separates a winner from a loser at the grandmaster level is the willingness to do the unthinkable. A brilliant strategy is, certainly, a matter of intelligence, but intelligence without audaciousness is not enough. Given the opportunity, I must have the guts to explode the game, to upend my opponent’s thinking and, in so doing, unnerve him. So it is in business: One does not succeed by sticking to convention. When your opponent can easily anticipate every move you make, your strategy deteriorates and becomes commoditized.
“When your opponent can easily anticipate every move you make, your strategy deteriorates and becomes commoditized.”
I would go as far to say that the same applies to customers and fans. When your every move can be anticipated, you cease to be exciting to them.
the “Microsoft Effect”
Jobs and Woz ….invented…. the Personal Computer!
For starters!
So Eric, have a hot cup of STFU!
When you use something and think to yourself “how the hell did I ever live without this!?” … .that is INVENTION…
Steve Jobs delivered that experience many times.
Who is Mark Anderson? Never heard of the guy. Not a blip, not a ding in the Universe, not even a fart to associate him. Who is Mark Anderson??? Whatever.. lol
The biggest thing Steve Jobs invented was instilling a drive to create products that put the customer’s experience above and beyond all else.
I wish other companies would try to understand that, instead of putting tech specs, market share, or shareholder profits above customer experience. If they did that, all of the other things would take care of themselves.
Of course, Jobs didn’t invent anything – just like Henry Ford didn’t invent the wheel, the internal combustion engine, nor physically cast any parts. His Model T was nothing new, and we all know Ford simply commissioned talented engineers to fulfil his novel visions, essentially doing nothing at all, while taking all the glory. What an egomaniacal slacker that Henry Ford guy was!!
Anyone who asserts Jobs never created anything is overtly displaying their own self imposed blindness (denial).
without inventing the apple 2 there would have been no visicalc and we’d all still be on mainframes. there would be no commodore 64, trs-80, atari 800, IBM PC etc. without the invention of the apple II.
Innovation is the creation of better or more effective products, processes, services, technologies, or ideas that are accepted by markets, governments, and society. Innovation differs from invention in that innovation refers to the use of a new idea or method, whereas invention refers more directly to the creation of the idea or method itself.
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This debate has become rather tiresome.
Inventing versus Innovating.
Jobs saw technologies and pieced elements of certain industries together. NO – not Inventing the smart phone – BUT – innovating a better smartphone with multi-touch and a superior operating system with features and applications; android still has not.
YES, he lead his Apple team to innovate – and see MARKETS other companies have not – this direction of innovation makes STEVE JOBS a master VISIONARY.
To bring this discussions to an end…
No Steve didn’t invent the MP3-Player, the Mouse, the GUI, the mobile phone the computer*…
rather he reinvented it to a degree where we all ask us now: “Why nobody else has done it? Why we had to wait so long for it?
And it is even hard to remember how life without it has been” or “how we could live without it”
* actually there is as dispute going on about the question “who made the first computer” was it Konrad Zuse was it Blaise Pascal or is the first computer ever build the “Antikythera mechanism” about 2200 years ago??
But the first Personal Computer comes, without any doubts, from Steve & Steve (Wozniak & Jobs).
just enjoy those precious gifts from Steve
Erol
A ass?