Tag: Paul Allen

All by ourselves

In the 70’s, the Me decade, we heard “All by myself” a lot on the radio.

Now, it’s the age of collaboration. All by ourselves.

Whiteboarding, synergy and M&A.

Nokia, Sony and Dell. All are taking the back seat.

Players we did not see coming are now in the field: Haier, Acer and Lenovo.

Users we did not know, can now afford buying our products e.g. I-phone 5s in Vietnam.

Dictators we thought couldn’t stand a chance, now sit in defiance of UN inspectors (Syria).

All by ourselves: APEC and TPP. NATO and UN Security Council.

Multi-polar world. Multi-tasking organization and multi-party lock jam.

It’s not that we can’t find good leaders. We weren’t prepared and planned for today’s contingencies.

Obama, once an Editor of Harvard Law Journal, just wanted to consult Congress on the War Powers Act.

In doing so, he exhibits the best of Constitutional compliance, yet entangled in “what if” scenarios, and  missed out a chance to be a great world leader.

All by himself.

Now people are speculating about Gates returning to Microsoft.

Must be hard the second time around (it would be the equivalent of Tom Hanks in Big, asking his x girl friend to go back and do it again).

He can be a figure-head, presiding over a round table of talents snatched up from competitors since the year of 2000.

Bill Gates is not needed for his prescient. After all, he missed seeing the Internet the first time around.

He can however humbly play the collaborator and coordinator role.

All by ourselves.

Or he can shut the door, and sing his heart out, like Bridget Jones, “All by myself”, all the while, envying Steve Jobs, in life as in death. Can you imagine a book and a movie on Gates? I’d rather read and see one about his partner in Idea Man – the one and only Paul Allen, rehearsing with the Stones in his private world-class yacht. The Stones don’t do “All by myself”.

 

Reading Idea Man

What would you do if you hit the PowerBall jackpot?

Paul Allen, Idea Man, had several ideas: space travel, mind mapping and music.

What would you do if you had no money at all?

You would day-dream (travel inside your mind), visualize what you would do if  you had money (like Charlie Chaplin, leaning out of the window to eat his home-grown grapes) and of course, go on free YouTube to listen to your favorite songs.

Rich and poor, we share the same hopes, fears and dreams.

The yearning to better ourselves.

Some do it the hard way (monk self-immolation, Mother Theresa, Nelson Mandela prisoner # 46664), others the ideal way (Bill Gates and Paul Allen).

I like the new tech billionaires.

They are more eco-friendly, more hip (recording studio on Octopus, world’s fourth largest yatch).

They got out of the tech boom and bust, while we continue with the real estate bubble.

Now when I hear of construction build-out, I got flashbacks.

Our next frontier lies in understanding the brain, the diseases and how our psychological make-ups (sub-conscious) dictates or hinders our choices.

We barely understood creativity. How one idea sparks another.

Paul’s best line in the book: often times, failure carries with it the seed of success.

Every so often, someone came along, did or said something that made us think .

We thank them for it. We are challenged by them. We build upon their shoulders, and yes their failures.

Paul Allen isn’t the only Idea Man. But he one who puts money behind those ideas he thinks might work. Ideas and action.

All along, he enjoys coding, playing music and reading. A classic American guy growing up in the 60’s: high-tech and high- touch (Jimmy Hendrix). Jam on. Even in between two cancer surgeries. That’s what life is all about.

Always between chapters. Always being rewritten and revised. Always tried and failed, then try again. Idea  Man. Action Man.

Turn, turn

Just as soon as it is unbearably hot, it rains.

The season turns. All we are is Dust in the Wind, sings the Kansas.

But before that, one more stanza.

Take it to the limits.

What are the chances for some friends to turn to the guy sitting next to him at a random cafe, to finally recognize a classmate with 40 years in between.

It happened last weekend.

It comes in full circle.

Loyalty. Same class for four years. 68-72, the height of everything: war, peace, love and music.

Seeing myself in them and vice versa.

Where do you start after such a long gap.

OK, just hop in. I will give you a ride.

Let’s toast to the next 40 years. Oh, no. OK, 20 years.

There you go. A bunch of middle-aged guys.

Without facial recognition technology, I can still see it in their faces.

There was V, now slightly bald.

G still had his hair all combed forward .

And H still with his mischievous smile, except he is now taller.

(we weren’t all fully grown then).

I am reading “Idea Man”, Bill Gates‘ partner, Paul Allen.

They “followed the chips” and coded BASIC.

Now software rules.

40 years. A lot has happened since, and a lot more could happen in the next twenty years (Moore’s Law applied to social sciences).

Yet friendship stood the test of time.

So are some music of that time.

Just as the vinyl albums were about to extinct, we got YouTube to revive them.

Turn, turn, turn.

Summer breeze.

I’d really love to see you tonight.

My friends, my music and memories.

Let the world turn. Just leave me with those essentials.

What is life?

Every generation thinks they had pushed the envelope. Until each of us faces that same dreaded end.

That’s when we really know who we truly are, what we cherish most and who stood by us.

I hope you don’t go through what I have found: time is our greatest test. Turn, turn, turn.

All we are is Dust in the Wind.