It's pretty standard at a tech conference to hear someone ask someone associated with Facebook (FB) "Who is the next Facebook?" Or, if they've worked with or known Steve Jobs, "Who is the next Steve Jobs?"
FRANKFURT AM MAIN, GERMANY - OCTOBER 06: A picture reading 'Danke, Steve' (Thank you, Steve) was... [+]
Recently, Erik Schatzker of Bloomberg TV asked Peter Thiel who famously was the first big backer of Facebook who he saw as the next Facebook out there on the tech landscape.
I'm paraphrasing but Thiel said something like:
I reject the question because there will never be another Facebook for social networks, or Google (GOOG) for search, or Apple (AAPL) for computers. The "next Facebook" will be a giant in some totally new area which we won't even recognize is such an important area when we first hear about it. So, you need to be looking for that and not the next big social network.
He's absolutely right.
And the same goes for the search for the "next Steve Jobs." There will never be another one. I'm sorry. But when Jobs took his last breath, that's it, he left us. Our desire to deify him - as if he made no mistakes - or to slap a label on to someone else that he or she is the next Steve Jobs are both foolish.
We can only be the best ourselves. It would be counter-productive for us to try and be like the image that we think - in our mind's eye - Jobs was.
Since Steve Jobs died, I've seen the press crown two people the "next Steve Jobs" more than anyone: Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey.
Both guys are young and run successful companies. They're geekish and are popular in Silicon Valley. Therefore, they must be the "next Steve Jobs" seems to be the thinking.
They both have enormous opportunities in front of them, but neither will be the next Steve.
Last week, Nick Bilton of the New York Times wrote a flattering profile of Twitter's CEO, Dick Costolo. In it, he made a side comment about its "Executive Chairman" and co-founder Jack Dorsey:
Last year, Mr. Costolo brought back Mr. Dorsey, who left the company in 2008 after he struggled to fix engineering problems that knocked Twitter offline for hours at a time. Such problems still occasionally plague the service.
Mr. Dorsey’s role has since been reduced after employees complained that he was difficult to work with and repeatedly changed his mind about product directions. He no longer has anyone directly reporting to him, although he is still involved in strategic decisions.
Mr. Dorsey declined to comment on how people feel about working with him. But, in a statement, he said he considered Mr. Costolo to be one of Twitter’s founders. “He’s had a dramatic impact on the company and the culture,” Mr. Dorsey said. “He’s questioned everything we started with and made it better.”
Mr. Costolo says he looks to Mr. Dorsey for ideas and sometimes has to pull them out of him. Although Mr. Dorsey is a regular on the media circuit, appearing on CNN, as well as “Charlie Rose” and other programs, he tends to be quiet in meetings.
“Dick does a good job of saying ‘Jack, what do you think?’ ” says Michael Sippey, director of consumer product at Twitter. Mr. Sippey works with Mr. Dorsey to make sure that new features are “Twittery.”
The somewhat unflattering comment about Dorsey's management style evoked this response from Dorsey on his Tumblr account a few days later:
There was a great profile in the New York Times about Twitter’s CEO, Dick Costolo, which mentioned my work at the company. It’s not a common arrangement, so I’d like to clarify a few points.
In Spring of 2011, Dick asked me to take an operational role overseeing product, design, and brand. Our shared goal was to get those organizations back under him as soon as possible, simply because it was the right thing to do for the company. We moved all of my reports back under him in January of this year after leadership was firmly in place. This allowed me to focus on refining our brand and logo, to work more with Dick and the leadership team on our direction forward, and ultimately return the majority of my time to Square, where I’m CEO. I’m back to going to Twitter on Tuesday afternoons, something I started before taking the interim operational role.
We haven’t talked about this publicly because it’s not what people using Twitter every day care about.
If it was Business Insider saying Dorsey was a bad manager, I'd trust Dorsey's account more. Because this is Nick Bilton of the Times who has no need to burn bridges where it's unnecessary, I tend to believe him.
Does it matter? Not really. Jobs was a horrendous manager at Dorsey's age. He only wised up by the time he returned to Apple in 1996.
My point in bringing this up isn't to trash Dorsey but to point out how silly the press is when they pronounce that Dorsey is not the "next Steve Jobs."
Ignore these labels. Everyone should spend more time identifying the next big thing and the next big leader, instead of trying to drive forward by looking in the rear-view mirror.
[Long AAPL]
