We will get to Steve Jobs in a moment. First we must discuss Joseph Schumpeter.
During the middle of the Second World War, Schumpeter, a great Austrian-born economist who for a period taught at Harvard, argued that the hero of capitalism, the entrepreneur, was doomed. He saw the only business figure worthy of myth-making being displaced (if not devoured) by managers, boardrooms, and shareholders. Weirdly, he saw this as part of the rise of socialism. The hero of capitalism would be smothered by the machine of corporate governance.
Of course, he was wrong. The myth of the heroic entrepreneur has persisted. It is today represented by figures like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. But in our era, no other entrepreneur captured the public’s imagination more than the late Steve Jobs. He started Apple with a friend in his parents’ garage. Later, he was thrown out of the corporation. Later still, he returned to Apple and, after making it one of the greatest corporations of our times, died at the relatively young age of 56.
