the onda

He isn't motivated by money, says friend Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle. Rather, Jobs is understandably driven by a visceral ardor for Apple, his first love (to which he returned after being spurned -- proof that you can go home again) and the vehicle through which he can be both an arbiter of cool and a force for changing the world.

From this week's Fortune piece (a must read for Apple fanboys) on Steve Jobs, "CEO of the decade."

Lately, I've been wondering whether the rhetoric of "top and bottom line growth" that pervades almost all corporate discussions in large companies isn't not only misguided when it comes at the exclusion of all else in technology companies, instead bordering on the downright destructive of what made these tech titans giants in the first place.

Only time will tell whether these behemouths driven to delight fund managers the world over won't end up smoldering craters of indistinguishable products and services.

Recently though I've realized that in two such companies, it didn't always use to be this way. Having just finished "The HP Phenomenon," I finally discovered that the term "make a contribution," which we today use as a synonym for "revenue and profit" was first coined by David Packard to mean: employ great engineering to make products that no else can build and that make the world a better place. Similarly, Craig Barrett from Intel recently talked at Stanford about how continuous investment in great engineers solving hard technical problems (like say, doubling transistor density every 18 months) is the only proven way to build sustaining value.

For sure, making money is awesome. A healthy business and balance sheet affords a company great opportunities for investment in all sorts of cool new projects, it brings with it independence, and best of all, if used wisely, it can go a long way towards creating a fantastic working environment. But to have that as the sole end— the only meaningful mission that gets repeated and internalized (as opposed to the crap on the Powerpoint slide that gets shown once for 30 seconds at the beginning of the year)— that seems to me to be a bit short-sighted.