Morning Latte - with Apple-MSFT flavors please!

Interesting morning so far.

Woke up to series of talks with AllThingsDigital - a joint conversation with Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. Boy, talk about creative tension within genius minds. It was so evident in the conversation, I'm glad Jobs did what he did when he reinvented Apple - take the focus away from "competing" with Microsoft - but rather create a market by himself leveraging the iPhone as a channel (winning without competing with folks who you are better off not competing 1:1). The approach was mentioned by Steve himself in this conversation, quite different from the interviews he gave in 1983 about Microsoft's ethics and culture. Anyways, fascinating to be in an era where two wonderful minds have created markets for the world to embrace.

Ended up shooting a mail to Mr.Jobs and gathering a quote from Mr. Gates - that's so much inline with my "Closing Credits" post, especially with the way the post was closed :)

Mr.Gates says:

"As I see it, there are two great forces of human nature: self-interest, and caring for others. Capitalism harnesses self-interest in a helpful and sustainable way, but only on behalf of those who can pay. Government aid and philanthropy channel our caring for those who can't pay. But to provide rapid improvement for the poor we need a system that draws in innovators and businesses in a far better way than we do today. Such a system would have a twin mission: making profits and also improving lives of those who don't fully benefit from today's market forces. For sustainability we need to use profit incentives wherever we can. At the same time, profits are not always possible when business tries to serve the very poor. In such cases there needs to be another incentive, and that incentive is recognition. Recognition enhances a company's reputation and appeals to customers; above all, it attracts good people to an organization. As such, recognition triggers a market-based reward for good behavior. In markets where profits are not possible, recognition is a proxy; where profits are possible, recognition is an added incentive."

Cannot be articulated any better!!....With some contentment, on to another round of coffee.