Read Rich Karlgaard’s Wall Street Journal op-ed. Karlgaard, the publisher of Forbes, gets it.
We do know the following: One, Steve Jobs is a much better salesman than Barack Obama. The president should visit Cupertino and take some lessons. Two, if America is to rediscover its mojo and grow its way out of debt and deficits?and not just pin the tail on the rich, or inflate it all away?it needs to liberate the new generation of Steve Jobses. Today, that challenge seems daunting. But the 1970s, the decade of Apple’s birth, offers hope that hardy seeds can take root even in bad climates.
[snip]
Mr. Obama and his advisers need to grasp this essential fact: Entrepreneurs are not just a cute little subsector of the American economy. They are the whole game. They will give us tomorrow’s Apples and the multiplier effect of small businesses and exciting new jobs that go with them. Entrepreneurs are necessary to keep our large multinationals on their toes. It’s no coincidence that the entrepreneurial flowering of the 1970s forced a managerial revolution in large companies during the 1980s and 1990s. Without Steve Jobs, there would have been no Lou Gerstner to reinvent IBM in the ’90s. Entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs make everyone better.
“Entrepreneurs are not just a cute little subsector of the American economy. They are the whole game.” True dat.
