Who is the next great leader in technology?

Saturday October 8, 2011, Brad McCarty

 

While we in the tech world are still celebrating the life of Steve Jobs, I’ve seen numerous articles over the past few days that talk about the things he’s accomplished, the impact that he’s had and where we go from here. I’ve had conversations through Twitter, Google+, over the phone and otherwise wherein everyone from entrepreneurs to analysts and Venture Capital firms have expressed their concern for the technology ecosystem as a whole.
But it occurs to me, as it should to you, that while the passing of Steve is a a tragedy of our generation, technology and entrepreneurialism will continue to move forward. By the very nature of their definitions, these two terms that describe our world are forced to move on. We’ll never forget Steve or his impact, and in fact should be driven forward by those factors.
It’s with these thoughts in mind that we started talking about who could be the next great technology leader during the recording of this week’s TNW Sessions. I’m not talking about filling shoes here, and I want to make that fact very clear. There will always be a set of New Balance trainers that stand empty in this marathon of technology. What I’m talking about is who will be the next leader, the next one to inspire greatness and who that person is that will drive the rest of the technology world further ahead.
Personally, I posit that Jeff Bezos will be lifted up by the technology community. When we look at the greater impact that Amazon has had, it’s nigh-on impossible to deny that it is a world-changing technology company. But it’s much more than that. Amazon has shifted the way that we think about retail, website hosting, shipping times and it has even changed the way in which we read. While I loathe the term “disruptive” to describe technology companies (can we just drop this one, already?) there is probably no better company to which this label can be applied at this point.
So I put the question out over Twitter – Who is the world’s next, great tech leader? I also put it out over email, to a few people whose opinions I value highly. The responses were varied and interesting, but there are a few pieces of common ground that I think are important to mention when it comes to how the world inside of technology views the requirements of being “great”.
Kara Swisher, in an editorial piece on All Things D, makes the same point that I have stated above:

“Certainly, at this moment, there is no one leader to fill Jobs’s outsized shoes.”

I couldn’t possibly agree more, but she also goes on to explain a good part of what it was that made Steve so special, and thereby begins the explanation of what the world expects from a technology leader. She describes Google’s Larry and Sergey as being “prosaic”, thus lacking in the poetic beauty of their words that can drive people. Zuckerberg is awkward (and I couldn’t agree more, though his recent f8 appearance was a prime example of his study of Jobs). Bezos, she says, lacks the “moxie and style” of Jobs. I’m not one to concede defeat easily though, so I’ll say that while she’s perhaps correct in that he lacks the style of Jobs, it is his own style that could raise his profile higher.
Twitter users had their own ideas, which further helped to shape what it would take in order to rise to the position of a star in tech. The terms showmanship and innovation were thrown around in almost equal parts, so we understand that consumers and enthusiasts expect to see both of these. It was also said that, perhaps, Apple itself would be seen as the next great mind, raising the question as to whether it could be a company as a whole, or if it indeed had to be a single person.

 http://thenextweb.com/insider/2011/10/08/who-is-the-next-great-leader-in-technology/