Innovators, Creators and Copycats

There are many good examples of threes in business and technology.  But I like this one a lot.  The late Apple CEO Steve Jobs talked about not bringing in the sales and marketing guys to run Apple because, he said, the company needed visionaries, who are those technical people who can be inspired to develop new products that drive the company.  New anything, including new products, are rarely created; they’re innovated.  Inventors create, which means they make something from nothing.  What keeps business growing is innovation that occurs when technical minds adapt an idea or product to a new use, a new market or a new application.  It’s innovation that drives business.  That’s what Jobs was so masterful at accomplishing.  He adapted Apple’s graphical user interface, its computer hardware expertise, and its ability to create supporting software to music to produce the iPod that changed the music industry.  Then he took iPod technology and produced the iPhone that changed telecommunications, and finally he came full circle in his wildly successful journey of innovation to produce the iPad, the smaller personal computer the world had been waiting for and wanted.  Only the iPad was better than anyone imagined it could be.  Steve Jobs was the ultimate innovator.  iPod, iPhone and iPad—his Big Three products after his return to the company he co-founded.  He possessed the unique vision that enabled technology innovation.  Everyone else is either a copycat or a creator, and there are few creators.  “He stood out in three ways—as a technologist, as a corporate leader and as somebody who was able to make people love what had previously been impersonal, functional gadgets,” wrote The Economist in a paean to his greatness following his death earlier this year.  What's your take on the Steve Jobs' legacy?