“Don’t Let the Rich, Famous Bozos Drag You Down.” IBM Home Computer Telephone
Guy Kawasaki, Silicon Valley-based author, speaker, entrepreneur, and tech evangelist, talks about how people will be against you most of the time. As he says in his 2014 TEDx Talk, “Don’t Let the Rich, Famous Bozos Drag You Down.” He defines the bozos as good people who seem to know everything. However, as he highlights, being successful doesn’t mean that they are good at predicting the future: • In 1943, the chairman of IBM, Thomas Watson, said, “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” A few years later, the world was full of computers. • A Western Union internal memo from 1876 stated, “This telephone has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.” A few decades later, almost everyone had a phone. • In 1977, Ken Olsen, co-founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, said, “There is no reason why anyone would want a computer in their home.” Fast forward a few decades, and almost everyone in the western world has a computer at home. If you want to change the world, you will swim against the current, and it won’t be easy. One of the core qualities any change-maker will need to have is resilience. You will fall on the ground many times. One of the methods to build strength is your ability to think, With whom can I collaborate? to achieve what everybody tells you can’t be done.
TEDx Talks. “The art of innovation | Guy Kawasaki | TEDxBerkeley.” February 23, 2014. Video, 21:15.
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