[rayiner]

Catching one trend, like Mark Zuckerberg, is just luck. But there’s clearly CEOs who are able to predict the direction of markets over a sustained period of time across multiple inflection points. E.g. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.

[Grombobulous]

I would still treat this like John Bogle treated mutual fund managers.

For every Steve Jobs there are a hundred Carly Fiorinas

[unknownfuture]

Eh, even if we take those mythologized examples as real (I'd argue the history of both is heavily whitewashed and their failues, like NeXT or Windows Phone to name just two, are papered over in their mythmaking), if anything they're the exceptions that prove the rule.

[hollerith]

Apple tried to create a new OS and failed (during Jobs's absence from Apple), bought NeXT, then used NeXT's work as the basis for the very successful OS X. And despite this, in your mind NeXT is a failure?

[unknownfuture]

NeXT itself, as a company, was absolutely a failure. That Apple came along and bought them and stripped them for parts is certainly convenient for Jobs, but doesn't change that, had they continued on their own, it would've ended up in the dustbin of history.

TBH I'm surprised you're arguing. NeXT is generally accepted as a commercial failure. Hell the NeXT cube, alone, was a famously collosal flop. This isn't even a little bit controversial.

[hollerith]

I don't see any mention of shareholder value or financial performance upstream (unless we count your latest comment). I do see, "their managers are not capable of leading innovation," and, "I don't see a reason to believe any CEO, past or present, has had the ability to accurately predict the future".

Jobs cared more about changing the world and advancing civilization than he cared about providing good value for investors. NeXT was a very solid success when measured by the yardstick of what Jobs set out to do.

Trying to make money by creating a new general-purpose operating system is inherently a very risky enterprise. NeXT's investors knew that.