My already boundless respect, admiration, love and awe for Steve Wozniak goes up by another unquantifiable amount yet again.
If any one person can be said to have set off the personal computer revolution, it might be Steve Wozniak. He designed the machine that crystallized what a desktop computer was: the Apple II.
He single-handedly designed all its hardware and software-an extraordinary feat even for the time. And what’s more, he did it all while working at his day job at Hewlett-Packard.
Being a technology person myself, I cannot help but wonder about the true maverick Woz is. Must read for every student. More so if you are a wannabe-entrepreneur.
India definitely needs a culture that embraces risk-takers. With so many engineers I think we can do with much more than Infosys & Wipro. Why do so many IITians and best brains across other engineering colleges have to get sucked into mind-numbless work? Your best bet to learn? Work for a startup. In a high-adrenalin atmosphere you’ll learn lots more, and are probably more likely to end up starting one yourself.
We need many more startups. Not in 100’s but in tens of thousands. And the Govt. would be better off encouraging the starters and taxing the biggies rather than the other way round – Gaurav has an excellent coverage of what recently happened but largely went unnoticed. I hope this one will be rolled back.
May 1, 2007 at 7:18 pm
Animesh,
One thing Narayan Murthy did was to make entrepreneurship respectable. You talk to the college guys of today. So many of them want to start a business. And people are actually doing it.
There’s one culture factor which is a problem, though. The responsibility towards the family. Unlike west, our families are far more cohesive and one doesn’t take career choices, especially as risky as leaving a job with a decent pay, without considering the implications on the family finances. I believe this keeps a lot of talented and ambitious people confined to their job security.
I don’t see a way out of this.
cheers
nilesh
May 8, 2007 at 8:41 am
Just came to your blog through Nilesh’s blog, nice it is.
One more thing that stops us, Indians, is not having failure as an option. If you start something and it doesn’t do well, here it means you have failed in life
May 9, 2007 at 10:08 am
Maybe its the culture thing that plays it part! Social norms of old times still hang over us, but we can see things are changing fast (albeit on a small scale).