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I personally feel there's a big overlap between Jobs and Musk—but none more so than the fact that they had the key combination of sufficient intelligence, clear vision, high self-confidence and (most importantly) strong influence over corporate direction.

One of my favourite Steve Jobs quotes is just after he returned to Apple and began dismantling the massive pile of legacy cruft. When asked about a particular (terrible) technology that Apple scrapped, Steve went on a particularly insightful rant that holds numerous insights into what he believes to be key to a successful company. And history proved those insights to be exactly right.

The quote— "Some mistakes will be made along the way. That's good. Because at least some DECISIONS are being made along the way, and we'll find the mistakes and we'll fix them." https://youtu.be/yQ16_YxLbB8?t=3286

In other words, as long as you're right often enough, being decisive is more important than being right every single time. Musk strikes me as sharing that mentality. He's right often enough that it's more efficient to "fix" the mistakes than to suffocate big decisions with big committees. And it's not like any big committee is sure to be right more often than Jobs/Elon anyway.

(That YouTube video is fantastic IMHO. Watched with the benefit of hindsight it shows that Apple's success wasn't an accident. Steve really did understand the formula that ultimately led to it.)

⬐ xeromal

I love this comment. Thanks for sharing.

⬐ matthewbauer

I don’t think Jobs was ever as irresponsible as Elon is. At least not publically.

⬐ sjwright

Steve had personality flaws at least as severe as Elon. The difference was Steve was a much better showman and had a laser focus on the nuances of messaging. Whereas Elon embodies the age of Twitter.

Yes, there are plenty of specific events where any sensible person would have slapped Elon on the back of the head and told him to stop being an idiot. Ultimately though, Elon's "irresponsibility" is largely a problem within the press, the short-sellers and with regulators who are lobbied by aforementioned short-sellers. Whatever. Let them sook. It's not like any of Elon's failings have affected Tesla sales or SpaceX successes.

⬐ icelancer

Far more in many respects. Treatment of Wozniak, the Apple II project, refusing to correct his vision on the Macintosh, etc. Treatment of key employees. It became public enough.

⬐ MPSimmons

I differ, in that I don't think Steve Jobs had a clear vision that he could communicate to others. I think he was very, very gifted as someone who could see the right path forward, and he seemed to execute ruthlessly.

The evidence I would put forth is that, in the decade since Steve Jobs died, Apple has added a watch to their lineup, and changed virtually nothing else. Their supply chain efficiencies might be better, but without Steve to look at what the rest of the world was offering, and to say, "That is all shit, THIS is what should be next", Apple has merely been a high-end manufacturer of electronics.

Elon, on the other hand, has a very clear vision, and it can be communicated in simple statements: "Humanity needs to be a multiplanetary species". "Electric vehicles are the only viable, sustainable means of mass short range travel".

When you combine this with the drive he has to succeed, you get people lined up behind him, not because they want to emulate him, but because their goals are aligned. The people who work at SpaceX want humanity to go to Mars - not because Elon says so, but because they know it has to happen for us to survive, and because Elon's company is the best hope we have right now.

⬐ askafriend

> in the decade since Steve Jobs died, Apple has added a watch to their lineup, and changed virtually nothing else

The Watch is incredibly popular, AirPods are a runaway hit, the iPad Pro is killing it, the new Mac Pro is awesome, Apple Music took off, Apple Pay/Card is super popular....

I genuinely don't know why you say they haven't done anything.

If anything it's incredible that the company manages to stay true to itself time and time again. That's a testament to the strength of the culture Steve left behind.

⬐ enitihas

People somehow hope that Apple can create an iPhone every 5/10 years, a product whole sales dwarf the revenues of Microsoft+Google taken entirely probably over the last 10 years. Yeah, not gonna happen. The iPhone is the most profitable consumer electronics product of all time maybe. You can't really re create it again and again.

⬐ vlovich123

> I don't think Steve Jobs had a clear vision that he could communicate to others

What are you basing this on? Seems to me that Apple leadership is pretty well aligned on a shared vision despite however large it's grown. That speaks to the fact that he managed to put (or at least didn't prevent) a successful leadership structure in place that continues to succeed regardless of his presence. It's a supremely difficult challenge & aligns with a lot of the insights that David Marquet makes in Turn This Ship Around. Regardless of any of the detail differences, the only way to measure successful leadership is it's resilience to changing out individuals in any given position.

⬐ sjwright

> I differ, in that I don't think Steve Jobs had a clear vision that he could communicate to others.

I never said he was a good communicator of vision. That said, just because Jobs failed to steer Apple from the grave isn’t evidence of failure on his part. The value of a person like Steve can’t be distilled into reproducible learnings—his value was in his ability to make real time decisions in service of a clear unified vision.

Even if you could find some replacement person who shared his vision, that doesn’t mean you can get everyone to cede to their proclamations like they would have with Steve.

⬐ arcticbull

He was an expert "editor" -- he knew what to say no to, and that's more powerful often than what to say yes to.

⬐ sjwright

> Elon, on the other hand, has a very clear vision, and it can be communicated in simple statements

That’s only because Elon’s particular house style lends to such vacuous motherhood statements. I have no problem with vacuous motherhood statements, but please recognise that they are fan service, not company vision.

Elon’s style is great for growing a niche fan base. Steve perfected the art of turning niche fan base into mass market appeal.

⬐ raverbashing

Yeah and I believe if SJ had twitter at his (prime) time we would have seen a lot of "questionable" moments like we're seeing with Elon.

(Or at least it would have leaked much easier through the grapevine)

If we're going to mine ancient history, lets put up a disclaimer that any company that exists for a 40+ years and is trying to invent new things is going to change their mind about stuff. If they didn't, they probably wouldn't be very good at inventing things.

There's context to consider with Apple in the 90s, which was weeks from bankruptcy. Here's SJ's rather famous response at WWDC 97 to why OpenDoc was killed, and a little later on he describes his opinion of Newton [1]. Hard to disagree with the sentiments.

Killing OpenDoc and Newton was a way to keep the company alive and prepare for the next big thing. 4 years later, out pops the iPod. 10 years later, the iPhone.

[1] https://youtu.be/yQ16_YxLbB8?t=3025

Somewhat famously, the first question Steve Jobs took at his developer Q&A at WWDC ‘97 was about OpenDoc & the bullet he put in its head.

https://youtu.be/yQ16_YxLbB8

Honestly, the “component software model” had at least hundreds of millions of dollars in development thrown at it by all the major players and went essentially nowhere at the application level.

It had some nice architectural properties for developers, and COM at least has had a long and prosperous history as a building block. But it’s hard to imagine any possible world where business or consumers spent a significant fraction of their software dollars on components rather than full applications. So Steve was probably right.

⬐ pjmlp

Microservices are the new components.

After all, the network is the computer.

⬐ mistersquid

Thanks for linking to the 1997 WDC (only 1 "w"!) Q&A with Jobs. For those hoping to cut to the chase, the timecode for Jobs' prompt and the hapless attendee who asks "What about OpenDoc" is 4:26 [0]

The four and a half minutes prior are interesting (thoughtful introduction, Jobs' framing of the session and his brief thoughts about Apple's current position), but what he says in response to the questions following the OpenDoc question is deeply thought-provoking.

Many of the ideas Jobs shares show the general shape of recent and current Apple business decisions macOS and iCloud, for example. Especially interesting are his discussions of NIH syndrome, networking, and more.

Thanks, twoodfin, for pointing to this session which punctuates Jobs' return to Apple the year previous.

[0] https://youtu.be/yQ16_YxLbB8?t=266

I've heard both of those stories from multiple places. I don't know exactly how you'd define "technical," he clearly wasn't a strong engineer, but I have heard multiple examples of him managing technical things. I remember around the same time he was known for memorizing chips and vendors very very well that he could source them very cheaply.

I think a good firsthand example is a one hour q&a with developers he did in 1997 soon after returning to Apple: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQ16_YxLbB8

He doesn't necessarily show off deep technical knowledge, but he is able to discuss strategy about technology directly with developers. Managing technology is his competitive advantage.

⬐ michaelcampbell

Not the OP but I don't define "technical" as "being able to manage technical things".

It's absurd that anyone would.