Steve Jobs and Bill Gates

Introduction

Innovations have always been the aspect, which stimulated the development of the society. One may define innovations as critical improvements in any sphere of human knowledge, which allow enhancing the efficiency of certain processes. Moreover, there is a dictionary definition of this word, which is “Something new or different introduced”. Innovations are brought to life by people with certain mind capabilities. Such people have a unique vision of objects and their connections, which let them going beyond the existing frameworks. This ability impacts the creation of modernized processes and devices, enhancement of operation and other. The two personalities from the 20^th century, who were great innovators, are Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Their domain of activity was digital technology, which has been characterized with the significant improvement for over half a century. That is why this paper regards them as the two heroes of the modern time and characterizes the motivations behind their actions. Moreover, it presents a review of their achievements with the comparison and contrast of their activities in the IT sphere. Their knowledge and talent of innovators resulted in the rapid boost of digital technologies throughout the last decades bettering people’s lives.

Reasons and Motivations

Characterizing the two heroes, one should describe the motivations behind their actions. Thus, Bill Gates is a billionaire, who created a Microsoft Company. His initial desire was an addiction to digital devices and electronics and a wish to create unique things. Moreover, his later wish was to see “a computer on every desk and in every home throughout the land”. Thus, despite his colleagues disagreed with him it took him several years to achieve big success. His creativity and inventiveness allowed him designing frameworks and computers for the usage in the whole world. Moreover, one of the aspects, which positively affected the development of his innovative ideas, was creativity. Thus, he attempted to blend the initial images from science fiction with his imagination, which positively affected the development of the business. Likewise, his quotes tell that he is a person with strong character and rational thinking , which enriches his heroic characteristic, Thus, one of Gates’ quotes are “We all need people who will give us feedback. That is how we improve”. The thing that triggered his interest in computers was a proposal of a local company at Seattle to use the computer to reach the school network. Several years later Gates was a prospective programmer full of innovative ideas and ready to implement them.

Likewise, another computer genius, which was Steve Jobs, also revealed oneself as a successful and prospective innovator. He had a talent of a creative person and he had an image of what an ideal computer should be. That is why he changed the concept of a computer by means of assembling own computers. The revolutionary devices with convenient and easy usage and attractive appearance stated spreading around the world. Moreover, he had a talent in human resources management. One may read it in his quote “The people who are doing the work are the moving force behind the Macintosh. My job is to create a space for them, to clear out the rest of the organization and keep it at bay”. Thus, he realized that he might be not the best at anything but he could build a team of professionals and inspire them to do what he wants. That why, one may say that Steve Jobs had a significant personal value of inspiration. He motivated people, created efficient teams and presented their works at large and interesting shows. All these qualities make him a hero of the contemporary life.

Contrasting the Effects

Furthermore, one has to contrast the effects of the activity of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Thus, one of the most significant steps of Bill Gates’ was writing the first programming language for the first microcomputer, Altair. This fact gave him a job and motivated him towards the future deeds. Moreover, the invented language, BASIC, which turned out to be and efficient tool for programming. Furthermore, Gates invented MS-DOS operating system, which has become an industrial standard of that time. Likewise, the third significant step of Gates and his company was the creation of Windows operating system. Its first versions, dated 1985, were slow but further improvements resulted that many vendors developed their software for Windows. Consequently, Windows is the best selling operating system in the world with the biggest scope of users. Therefore, Bill Gates managed to create a stable virtual framework for millions of people improving their lives.

At the same time, the way and impact of Steve Jobs’ activity was partially different. Thus, his early days of work united him with a friend, Stephen Wozniak, who was older and experienced in computers. One may regard that since that time Jobs discovered a talent of a manager and a leader. Their first microcomputer was Apple Computer assembled in 1976. This date was significant because the friends have introduced a platform, which is completely different from the one of Microsoft.

Furthermore, their computer Apple II was presented as a much powerful system, which had got colorful graphics. The talent of Jobs in making the things convenient and stylish resulted that hundreds of thousands of Americans bought Apple II to perform calculations at home. Thus, apple computer are the primary important innovative solutions from Steve Jobs. His further discovery, significant for millions, was the introduction of Mac OS, an operating system with the advanced user interface. Scholars argue that the continuous improvement of Mac OS X and the powerful core technologies and development tools it provided proved key in the Digital Hub strategy. Furthermore, another inventive device was an iPhone. Basically, Jobs took an old concept of a phone, framed it and transformed into a conceptually new device. As a result, iPhone provided new possibilities for business and affected traditional phone business selling 6 million of phones during the existence of iPhone. Consequently, both heroes drastically affected the world of business involving the emergence of numerous inventive devices and software. At the same time, one regards Steve Jobs being a better innovator than Bill Gates because he strived for people’s aesthetic satisfaction and convenience. The indicated aspects can be easily observed in any product by Apple, which approves the success of its creator.

Conclusion

Summarizing the presented information, the paper concludes that Steve Jobs was a more talented innovator than Bill Gates. Despite the fact that both personalities were great leaders and successfully implemented their ideas their products differ. Thus, Apple’s products look and function more balanced and have an honorable reputation, which approves the fact that Jobs met the needs of the customers. Moreover, Jobs had a unique talent of teambuilding, which allowed him uniting a team of professionals around his projects. As a result, his ideas were implemented by the best designers and engineers. Additionally, this paper demonstrates us that the innovators may be different in terms of character and principles of government of their business. At the same time, both of heroes are role models of successful innovators, whose ideas drastically changed the world.