Gates v. Bush
From the online discussion of the article I pimped in the last post:
There was a time when Bill Gates was convinced the Internet was not a threat to Microsoft's business. But Gates is a curious person who reads widely and takes two weeks off each year just to talk to interesting people around the world. And he wants and expects people within the organization to challenge his thinking. And as a result of that process of continually subjecting his "vision" in the marketplace of ideas, he changed his "vision" and decided Microsoft had to embrace the Internet. And that's a pretty good model -- a guy who is tough enough to have a vision and stick by it, even when some people criticize it, but also a guy who is open minded enough and curious enough and "paranoid" enough (as Andy Grove calls it ) to do a 180 degree turn when it appears he's wrong. Does that describe George W. Bush? Donald Rumsfeld? Dick Cheney? There's not a lot of supporting evidence that it does, in my opinion.
Does the Maximum Leader disagree? Republicans (note that I do not say "conservatives" since true conservatives have been and are continuing to jump ship), please e-mail me with a description of a time when Bush or Cheney realized one of their plans was not working and changed policy. I eagerly await your response.
There was a time when Bill Gates was convinced the Internet was not a threat to Microsoft's business. But Gates is a curious person who reads widely and takes two weeks off each year just to talk to interesting people around the world. And he wants and expects people within the organization to challenge his thinking. And as a result of that process of continually subjecting his "vision" in the marketplace of ideas, he changed his "vision" and decided Microsoft had to embrace the Internet. And that's a pretty good model -- a guy who is tough enough to have a vision and stick by it, even when some people criticize it, but also a guy who is open minded enough and curious enough and "paranoid" enough (as Andy Grove calls it ) to do a 180 degree turn when it appears he's wrong. Does that describe George W. Bush? Donald Rumsfeld? Dick Cheney? There's not a lot of supporting evidence that it does, in my opinion.
Does the Maximum Leader disagree? Republicans (note that I do not say "conservatives" since true conservatives have been and are continuing to jump ship), please e-mail me with a description of a time when Bush or Cheney realized one of their plans was not working and changed policy. I eagerly await your response.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home