The departure of Steve Jobs, resigning as Apple’s CEO, after a cancer recurrence diagnosed seven years ago, is an opportunity to reflect on the role of innovations in history.
Throughout history, they have created and destroyed empires, from the wheel, the yoke, metallurgy, the sternpost rudder, the printing press, the steam engine and so many others.
Since the United States appeared on the stage of history, the innovator was often mistaken for the industrialist who is carrying out his innovation: Rockefeller, Edison, Ford, among others, have understood that an innovation must first serve a market: that of men first with the automobile. Then that of women by invading the home (refrigerator, washing machine, television).
Steve Jobs, tragic figure, come out of nowhere, without support of any kind, he, understood even before anyone else that the next market necessarily global, would be that of young people: entertain, communicate, learn. And one could touch them only with beautiful, simple objects; and by starting to help them get what they love most: music.
For this, others have developed softwares; as for Jobs he realized that they would be nothing without the machines to use them. He understood that the future is not, as we have said far too much, to post industrial societies, where services would dominate, but to hyper industrial societies, where services would be transformed into industrial objects, creating the need for new services. And he produced these new machines, that is to say, nomadic devices which young people need. And all those, older who, want to feel younger by using them.
His company, which became the first in the world, is preparing the future nomadic devices: a TV and probably tomorrow’s machines for education and health.
This visionary did it on a world scale: moreover he has industrialized China more than the United States and created more jobs there. He did it also by putting in place a closed, protected universe, for related services, closing which is only possible if the nomadic devices are attractive enough to justify this constraint; and if the priority remains personal accumulation and not sharing, enemy of the world according to Jobs. The world to come, which would justify the vision of Jobs, would be thus a world gathered, where the rule of law would apply everywhere, and where young people would prevail.
Today, everything takes us away from it: the world is dividing, the rule of law is eroding. And power belongs to seniors, increasingly more numerous. And these seniors do nothing to ensure that young people can buy new nomadic products, that could kick-start economic growth.
Thus, Apple cannot be a source of sufficient innovation to restart growth, as long as a major institutional revolution has not taken place, which would provide a stable income for young people, as was the case with salary fixing with the automobile, the nuclear family and family allowances for household goods. We are far from it, very far, in a world where young people are, globally, the first victims of unemployment. And nobody will provide to all young people in the world spending money needed for the purchase of these goods.
The World according to Jobs is not yet for tomorrow. And further still is the world of sharing, which would combine that of Jobs and free access.