In the years of bitter struggle between capitalism and socialism,
young generations around the world were obsessed with Karl Marx and his
socialist ideas. Posters of celebrated revolutionaries like Che Guevara,
Fidel Castro, and Mao Zedong decorated university walls, while red
banners and anti-capitalist, antibusiness slogans colored and enlivened
popular demonstrations.
Today, with the triumph of capitalism over socialism, with unionism on the retreat, and with another Renaissance of individual freedoms and liberties, younger generations are no longer obsessed with socialist ideas and antibusiness slogans. Their heroes and idols are no longer celebrated revolutionaries. They are entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, who have been the revolutionaries in their own industries, delivering the world new products and businesses and creating enormous wealth for themselves, their associates, stockholders, and society at large.
In some sense, today’s admiration for entrepreneurs parallels Mark Twain’s and Charles Dudley Warner’s Gilded Age with its own celebrated entrepreneurs, like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, at least before public opinion turned against them. Yet unlike the Gilded Age, today’s admiration of individual entrepreneurs may be exaggerated. Behind the success of Apple (NYSE:AAPL), Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), Facebook, and Google, and hundreds and thousands of successful high-tech companies aren’t just the visible and the famous individual entrepreneurs who started them, but the hundreds of thousands of unknown individual entrepreneurs who collectively share the risks and rewards from the discovery and exploitation of new products and business. The many versions of Windows, for instance, wasn’t developed and marked by Bill Gates alone. For all practical reasons, he could not have either the time or the technical experience and and the expertise to write the millions of lines of software code behind the flushing screens and the eye-catching images; neither would have the marketing skills and time to persuade computer vendors and manufacturers to install a copy of the software in almost every PC that came off the manufacturing line. The same is true for Google ‘s (NASDAQ:GOOG) search engine, and Apple’s MacBook, iPhone, and iPad.
Microsoft’s, Google’s, and Aplle’s products were develop and marketed by hundreds of engineers and marketers both inside and outside their corporate boundaries paid on the basis of performance, mostly in stock options, rather than on a flat wage basis. In this sense, each and every member of these corporations and their partners and alliances is part of a collective entrepreneurship rather than part of a hierarchical organization that divides its members into stockholders, managers, and workers, into insiders and outsiders. Each member plays a role in the activities of these entrepreneurial networks and shares the risks and the rewards from the discovery and exploitation of new products.
The bottom line: Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Sergey Brin, Larry Page have drawn a great deal of admiration these days for their pioneering successes that changed the world we live in. While well deserved, this admiration may be overrated, as the accomplishments of these celebrated entrepreneurs is a collective rather than an individual act.
Today, with the triumph of capitalism over socialism, with unionism on the retreat, and with another Renaissance of individual freedoms and liberties, younger generations are no longer obsessed with socialist ideas and antibusiness slogans. Their heroes and idols are no longer celebrated revolutionaries. They are entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, who have been the revolutionaries in their own industries, delivering the world new products and businesses and creating enormous wealth for themselves, their associates, stockholders, and society at large.
In some sense, today’s admiration for entrepreneurs parallels Mark Twain’s and Charles Dudley Warner’s Gilded Age with its own celebrated entrepreneurs, like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, at least before public opinion turned against them. Yet unlike the Gilded Age, today’s admiration of individual entrepreneurs may be exaggerated. Behind the success of Apple (NYSE:AAPL), Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), Facebook, and Google, and hundreds and thousands of successful high-tech companies aren’t just the visible and the famous individual entrepreneurs who started them, but the hundreds of thousands of unknown individual entrepreneurs who collectively share the risks and rewards from the discovery and exploitation of new products and business. The many versions of Windows, for instance, wasn’t developed and marked by Bill Gates alone. For all practical reasons, he could not have either the time or the technical experience and and the expertise to write the millions of lines of software code behind the flushing screens and the eye-catching images; neither would have the marketing skills and time to persuade computer vendors and manufacturers to install a copy of the software in almost every PC that came off the manufacturing line. The same is true for Google ‘s (NASDAQ:GOOG) search engine, and Apple’s MacBook, iPhone, and iPad.
Microsoft’s, Google’s, and Aplle’s products were develop and marketed by hundreds of engineers and marketers both inside and outside their corporate boundaries paid on the basis of performance, mostly in stock options, rather than on a flat wage basis. In this sense, each and every member of these corporations and their partners and alliances is part of a collective entrepreneurship rather than part of a hierarchical organization that divides its members into stockholders, managers, and workers, into insiders and outsiders. Each member plays a role in the activities of these entrepreneurial networks and shares the risks and the rewards from the discovery and exploitation of new products.
The bottom line: Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Sergey Brin, Larry Page have drawn a great deal of admiration these days for their pioneering successes that changed the world we live in. While well deserved, this admiration may be overrated, as the accomplishments of these celebrated entrepreneurs is a collective rather than an individual act.
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