Not necessarily, but their critics have something very different to say! First, we are talking about two of the best minds in this century. Both believed in an outlandish idea but did what they could to bring those ideas to life. That being said, they still had to deal with critics and did have their fair share of failures and successes.
Who is overrated?
Coming back to those critics – many believe that Elon Musk is overrated, only when it comes to profiting from some of his genius that has brought forward some interesting stuff. So, that stuff involves concepts that could change humanity and the plant for the better. If realized, they could really benefit us. Benefitting us was one of the main goals in Jobs’ mind when he took the Macintosh PC and revamped it to give us the sought after devices of today.
The Elon Musk situation
So what’s the problem? Those concepts get twisted and eventually lost in the world of business, success and most importantly, money. So no, Elon Musk isn’t overrated but he highly criticized for bringing forward ideas that CEO, investors, and businessmen feel aren’t profitable and are already being worked on by some other company.
Also, the marketing machine that creates hype around those concepts pegs Musk as some kind of genius. Solar energy isn’t any ‘new’ invention but he is reinventing it so that he can further the ‘Clean Energy’ notion. For example the Solar Roof projects in California – where solar voltaic cells would make up the roofing structures of buildings and not be installed in the form of standard panels as we know them today. Then he does use his genius for good, setting up 11,000 solar panels projects in Puerto Rico, which was recently devastated by earthquakes.
His Space X program has successfully created a cost-effective rocket development system. If this idea passes the testing phase, we could soon have what’s referred to as commercialized travel to other planets. We already know that NASA is working on colonization projects for Mars. So credit should go where its due and no, he’s definitely not overrated!
The Story of two Steves
Then there’s Steve Jobs, the guy who founded Apple and designed their range of products. Steve Jobs was a visionary who saw what really lay in Steve Wozniak’s first draft of Macintosh PC. The idea was rejected over five times by HP, the company that was Wozniak’s first employer.
Xerox did invest some research efforts, developing the first PC, mouse, keyboards etc. Unfortunately, both mega brands missed out on the biggest technological opportunity and Xerox never fully commercialized what they built. So it’s hard to say that Steve Jobs was overrated when he took up Wozniak’s PC idea and made it happen.
Adding to that, Jobs had stepped in when Apple was about to go bankrupt. He turned that around and made it one of today’s most valuable companies. He had also changed its business approach, making it fully customer-centric too – a factor that helped a great deal in making it as successful as it is today. Just think, it all started with one PC prototype.
