When Steve Jobs passed away almost four-and-half years ago, the entire tech world mourned his loss. After all few people epitomised creativity, ingenuity, and pure passion like he did. Without sounding too dramatic, he left a void in the industry; a void that many thought would be hard to fill.
Naturally, we wondered “Who’s going to be next Steve Jobs”?
If you ask people at Apple, and they will say that Steve Jobs is irreplaceable. “There can never, ever be another Steve Jobs.”
But obviously! This is Apple that we’re talking about. But what about the greater tech world? Has innovation died with Steve Jobs?
Truth is we are all bound by the laws of evolution. Someone will rise to fill the void left by the great visionary.
And someone already has – Elon Musk.
The Rise of a New Great
In some ways, Elon Musk is a bit like Jobs. He has radical ideas of which he’s fiercely protective. Like Jobs, he is a workaholic, relentless in the pursuit of perfection. He has been hailed a genius time and again, a prodigy even, and there’s no doubt that he possesses a brilliant mind.
And that’s where the similarities end. Unfortunately, Musk does not have the charisma that made Steve Jobs the public figure he was.
Just recently, Musk announced his dream project — The Tesla Model 3. Industry pundits are calling it the car “that could change everything.” And yet, if you look at the keynote Musk gave for the event, nothing could be more underwhelming.
He was up on the stage for all of 13 minutes. That’s it! 13 minutes was all the time Elon Musk took to announce the biggest technology breakthrough of the decade!
If you watch the keynote, you will find that Musk is painfully lacking in oratory skills. He doesn’t indulge in grand showmanship, and his presentation is devoid of any intrigue.
Musk fumbles and stumbles through his words. There are a few jokes, yes, but they aren’t well-timed. Even the slides behind him were not synced with his words (they were displaying figures before he was saying them).
If Jobs were alive today to see that presentation, he would die of a heart attack.
There’s also a more fundamental difference between the two geniuses.
Jobs was not the friendliest of people out there. Don’t get me wrong – it’s not uncommon for people with great vision to be a little hard to deal with. They tend to be extremely eccentric in nature and are not above making life miserable for those around them. And Jobs had a reputation for being a mean boss and colleague.
But Elon Musk is supposedly a hoot to work with. “Elon is without question one of the most brilliant, dynamic, and charismatic people that I have ever met,” says Dolly Singh, former Head of Talent Acquisition at SpaceX. “Elon is a phenom, some sort of exceptional freak of nature.”
So although there are similarities, there are differences too. And yet Musk is being touted as the next Steve Jobs. Perhaps someone even greater! ‘The Tesla and SpaceX founder’s “reality-distortion field” eclipses even that of Steve Jobs,’ writes Steve LeVine for the Quartz.
The Big Question
Can Musk be a genius without necessarily being an asshole? Can he project his vision on others and yet not be a prick about it? Can he continue to change that stereotype just as he’s changing our future?
Can he be the next Steve Jobs? Or is Musk about to become a living legend in his own right?
You have an idea, a small spark in your head, and you’ve to nurture it to make it a flame that will set the world on fire! But people will try to get in your way, to stop you from doing it, because they can’t see the world as you can. That’s the definition of genius.
