Amaya Toman Bill Gates gave an interview to CNN on Sunday's Fareed Zakaria GPS program. In a special episode, dedicated to the topic of managing large companies, but also working in the government or the military, Gates spoke in front of the moderator and two other guests, among other things, about former Apple CEO Steve Jobs and how it is possible to turn a dying company into a prosperous one.
In this regard, Gates said that Jobs had a unique ability to take a company that was "on the road to destruction" and turn it into the most valuable company in the world. With a bit of exaggeration, he likened this to Jobs's magic, calling himself a minor magician:
“I was like a minor magician because [Steve] was doing magic and I could see how fascinated people were. But since I'm a lesser wizard, these spells didn't work on me,” the billionaire explained.
To label Steve Jobs and Bill Gates only as rivals would be misleading and oversimplifying. In addition to competing with each other, they were also, in a sense, collaborators and partners, and Gates made no secret of his respect for Jobs in the aforementioned interview. He admitted that he had yet to meet a person who could compete with Jobs in terms of talent recognition or design sense.
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According to Gates, Jobs was able to succeed even when he seemingly failed. As an example, Gates cited the creation of NeXT in the late 1980s and the introduction of a computer that he said completely failed, was such nonsense, yet people were fascinated by it.
The speech also touched on the infamous negative aspects of Jobs' character, which, according to Gates, are easy to imitate. Reflecting on the corporate culture he himself created at Microsoft in the 1970s, he acknowledged that in its early days the company was predominantly male, and people were sometimes quite hard on each other and things often went too far. But Jobs was also able to bring "incredibly positive things" into his work and approach to people from time to time.
You can listen to the full interview <a href="https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1932/8043/files/200721_ODSTOUPENI_BEZ_UDANI_DUVODU__EN.pdf?v=1595428404" data-gt-href-en="https://en.notsofunnyany.com/">here</a>.
Source: CNBC
