Discussion on:

Was Steve Jobs the greatest innovator of all time?

Steve Jobs was not THE greatest innovator of all time but he certainly ranks in the top 10. He may have been the greatest innovator in this decade. I will give him that even though I am not a "i" product fan. They are great products just overpriced as most Apple stuff is.

Nikola Tesla Was the greatest innovator of the last 100 years. With out Nikola Tesla . Edison / Jobs / Bell . Would have Nothing !!!!

Edison was a joke. Tesla out-shined him several fold. We can thank Tesla for our AC current in our homes and low cost electricity. Edison new there was a lot of money at stake and wanted the money - Tesla had the American people in mind.

Without Tesla, General Electric (GE for your younger ones) wouldn't exist.

... but don't get mad at him. Thank our government. Read about all the chats our current president had with him and you'll see how naive our government is.

Agreed! And it's about time Tesla got the recognition due him!

Before I scrolled down to see comments, I saw the list of 'innovators'... And it was a good thing I wasn't drinking anything, as I probably would have spit it out in derisive laughter.
Tesla was the first that came to mind, and should be at the top of the list... But then we ~ARE~ talking about this particular group polled, that others have commented so succinctly on.

Sorry Tuan, bad joke of an article

Apple's technical innovations were almost entirely the result of Steve Wozniak in its early years and the teams of engineers that were built or acquired from other companies. Steve Jobs' innovations were in marketing, branding and PR. Tesla, Bell, Berners-Lee, and others who actually invented or found practical applications for emerging technologies were actual innovators.

Steve Jobs didn't innovate anything, he just knew how to catch someone else's innovation, then with some help, drive the people at Apple to come up with a good way to hype and sell a similar product for themselves.

She was really good at polish and marketing. Apple and NEXT were never the first to a technology but this last decade Jobs only approved technologies once they were mature enough to work seamlessly.

That may be a great innovation in it's self.

No offense, but excluding even younger age sets - 16-25 year old people (any generation) represent both the least educated and least experienced people on the planet. Not that some can't individually produce significant answers, but they are a less than an optimally informed group to ask. If this reflects the only age group queried - it also reflects the dubious intellectual and professional competence of the survey producers. If the intent was just gage age related perspectives of this age group regardless of the answers correctness or relevancy - ok, you have an answer.

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This is the age where they lay their groundwork. They haven't been told it can't be done enough. The next 10 years are when the inventions and observations emerge.

As for Steve Jobs, that's who those people know. He had his finger on the pulse of commercial possibilities for Apple, but an iPod is not transmitted electricity and the iPhone is not the telephone. The most creative person ever is most likely someone who lived hundreds or thousands of years ago, whose accomplishments probably stayed close by and who could not call a press conference of representatives from around the world.

Once all permanent forms of recorded history are replaced by the iPad it will be revealed that not only does Wing Fat make the best egg salad in the world but he is also the greatest inventor of all time. He who holds the patent rules the world. Its a risky business putting your inventions into the hands of those who show a propensity for industrial espionage.

He only made use of others ideas and foresight.
Said before my input Jobs did great on promoting and sales.
Crapple may entertain the crew of texters but to purchase another
unit every 4/6 months .....is all sales and too much HYPE

The same people who decry the loss of inventiveness in American business are the same people who have done their best to strip our education system of any courses that might foster creativity or innovation.

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Martin Luther King knew how to innovate -- his innovation (words) brought about an end to formal racism in America and civil rights for all. Without him, America was headed towards social and race war that would left the United States a shattered smattering of warring tribes open to foreign invasion.
MLK is the greatest innovator of the 21st Century.

Apple does not innovate anymore and Jobs never did anything but innovate selling pretty things that cost twice as much as a superior device that Apple either stole the technology for or was given the patent for after the fact. I think I just heard USPO is granting the patent for electricty to apple. Woz was the innovator. All Apple was under Jobs is a greedy monopoly just like they accuse MS of being...only worse.

It's debatable if he was an innovator.

I bet half the people polled didn't even know what an innovator was. Jobs invented nothing, just made existing technology more user friendly.

He was however a marketing genius.

His name will be forgotten in 20 years.

First, a story on this survey doesn't belong here. Second, after having - again - to ask you youngins' not to write irrelevant headlines like this, I am officially taking myself off your newsletter list. You! Are! Wasting! My! Time!

Don't you mean Nikola Tesla?

What does the AC Adapter powering most of your stuff convert the AC current into? DC. Edison just had the thing wrong with traveling it distances. Both AC and DC get used quite well, and for different reasons.

DaVinci, Archimedes, Hypatia, Ptolemy... the engineers/architects for the Pyramids & Stonhenge (not strawhenge or woodhenge- Stonehenge, one of the biggest henges in the world!. no ones built a henge like that ever since...).
Then there's all the knowledge, and the names of those who created it, we lost with the Great Library of Alexandria.
The first guy to make a wheel, knap a sharp edge out of a mineral, make a fire by hand...
I could go on for pages I think. I didn't even touch ancient China, India, Mesopotamia, etc.
Tesla definitely deserves a mention. He was hampered so much by circumstance & mental health issues, one can barely imagine the heights he could have risen to.
I like Steve Jobs. I started out on an Apple II+, have owned multiple Macs & NeXTs (among an almost endless line of computers, also including WinPC's, boxes running various proprietary UNIX systems, and linux boxes.), I was recently gifted an iPhone, which... is a perfectly good cell phone. But Jobs is hardly the "Greatest Innovater of Alll Tiiiime!!". I wouldn't even give him top 10, considering all of much more massively important innovations to our species than flavored iGadgets & MacOS.

He showed us that there is no "i" in TEAM. Except iTEAM.

Two kids at the right moment in time with the right skills. Jobs/Woz to Xerox PARC "Lab Coats" as Edison was to Lab Coats like Tesla. Took it and ran???!

Probably the most mind-numbingly stupid Blog I have seen in quite some time.

Edison, Tesla, Marconi, Whittle, Ford, Davy, Faraday,,,,,,,,,

While Jobs was a great entrepreneur, he isn't even in the top 15. Try living without the basic inventions and you wouldn't give a damn about Steve.

Congrats to all those mature minds above, could I just add my hero in here, Leonardo didn't just paint the Mona Lisa, he did many drawings of things we take for granted now while others get the kudos.
Which came first, the idea or the hardware?
PS: Jobsie may go down in history as a great opportunist, no more.

i would have to say Alexander Bell beats all just because what his legacy in Bell Labs has become

Innovator - to introduce something new; make changes in anything established.

Who has effected popular American culture more than anyone else?
Thomas Edison? Henry Ford? Bob Dylan?

How about the man without who popular American music would not exist in its current form? Rock, blues, country, soul, pop, jazz, swing, etc all use products he either invented or developed: The solid-body electric guitar; the solid-body electric bass; industry standard amplifiers.

His 1951 introduction of the electric bass (and the bass amp) fundamentally changed all popular music. The electice guitar that he invented in 1948 is still the sound that defines country music to this day . The guitar he invented in 1954 is still the most popular electric guitar today. The amplifiers he designed between 1955 and 1965 are industry standards and virtually all amps made today are influence by them, and many are direct copies.

Leo Fender owned about 75 patents and his products not only define popular American music, they made it possible.

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What kind of result is that. Innovation is not calculated according to money. That is not smartplanet

Newton once said, "we stand on the shoulders of many other intellectuals"...Nikola Tesla comes to my mind and many other people can be listed here...
Our culture has this tendency of making the last guy in the chain, the father of things...the trophy winner etc., we forget many other contemporary inventors/innovators who invented the bulb [someone from Russia / Europe] and the ones who independently invented the wheel and not famous... Steve didn't sit there and innovate things... he marketed them well... Great many technicians, mathematicians, physicists and chemists etc etc so many of them out there contribute for the overall knowledge pool ... and on a side note our iphone was not made by Apple... Chinese kids made it...

What he was was a good thief and hustler.