Steve Jobs and the Spirit of American iCulture

Apple (along with Microsoft, Google, Twitter, Facebook, etc.) can only thrive in America, not in China, not in South Korea, let alone Indonesia. China gave birth Baidu, South Korea raised Samsung, but they only the followers – of course shrewd followers – not the inventors. And the greatness of American technology and business is not merely about human resources or technology mastering, but it’s about culture.

What does really make America incredible? Is it spirit of capitalism that offers freedom and brings competition?

It reminds us to Uni Soviet’s technology, the then American arch enemy. After World War II, in 1957 Uni Soviet launched successfully unprecedented manned space aircraft, Sputnik. Yuri Gagarin became the first man to go outer space. It proved Uni Soviet invented as much technology as America, particularly in space technology and military equipments. Until now Uni Soviet/Russia had never devoid of great scientists or engineers compared to western capitalists.

But why do they fail to produce Steve Jobs-like inventors?

Some people said it is because of no-competition culture in communist countries, so there is no incentive to invent commercial products (not limited in IT industry). This reason by no means is wrong at all. Best products with affordable price only transpire in free market circumstances.

But I want to propose the best account that I have ever heard about the triumph of capitalism/free market. It came from Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the author of best seller book, Black Swan. He coined Black Swan referring to highly improbable occurrence that finally gives highly influencing impact. His underlying idea is never to believe of any predictions. Nobody can predict something from anything stretching from the event of war, country’s economy, stock market to finding your would-be wife/husband.

‘You-can’t predict-anything’ law prevails in business products that will overwhelm the world as well. For instance, IBM, the computer juggernaut, can’t predict the rise of personal computers and its lucrative operating system software by letting Microsoft rules the world since the early years.

Accordingly, given this unknown factors of business success, capitalism offers better chances than other ideology such as communism. It brings great opportunities to play with any ideas that some flop, but some succeed. In Taleb’s words:

“The reason free markets work is because they allow people to be lucky, thanks to aggressive trial and error, not by giving rewards or incentives.”

Unsurprisingly, neither Steve Jobs always launched great products, since he made several failed products including LISA, the first futuristic personal computer with mouse, and once get sacked from Apple on ground of Mac’s sluggish sale. He was just very lucky in his final years with string of success through iPod, iPhone, iPad.


Only the chosen few can muddle through free market’s cut-throat competition. Every American start-ups should be ready with grim reality. According to US small business administration, majority of start-ups vanish in five year and two-thirds sink forever in ten years.

Finally, the rise of America/capitalism, the rise of Steve Jobs/Apple is enabled by ‘trial-and-error’ culture. Somehow something good with great impact (Black Swan) can pop up from the very culture. As Taleb said:

”The strategy is, then, to tinker as much as possible and try to collect as many Black Swan opportunities as you can.”

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