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Monday June 29, 2009

Fame comes from the brain


Monday Starters - A weekly column by Soo Ewe Jin

A SMALL group from F&N came by the office the other day and I could not resist asking if anyone among its 18,000 employees worldwide was related to the original founders John Fraser and David Neave who started the soft drinks business back in 1883.

I would ask the same question if that group had been from Hewlett-Packard, Ogilvy & Mather, A&W or Ford. Some of the prominent law firms in this country carry names of people long gone.

Such is the power of a company’s branding when the founders’ legacy lives on.

Then there are also companies where you simply cannot dissociate the company from the personality, even if they may not carry their names.

Think Genting and Lim Goh Tong, Microsoft and Bill Gates, KFC and Col Sanders or Apple and Steve Jobs.

Steve Jobs ... ‘Customers are voting and the iPhone is winning.’

The Apple CEO is a living legacy and it is no surprise that he got a lot of press last week.

After an enforced six months away from the public eye, where there was much speculation about his health, we learnt that he recently underwent a successful liver transplant at the Methodist University Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee.

He is in good shape, apparently, but not well enough to appear at the launch of the iPhone 3GS on June 19. Still, within 72 hours, Jobs gave his first statement since he went on medical leave, declaring proudly that more than 1 million of the new phone had been sold over the weekend. “Customers are voting, and the iPhone is winning,” Jobs said.

It’s good to have him back though the long-term prognosis may still be uncertain.

From some of these recent developments, it is clear that the investing public is not about to let Jobs go.

The fact that his health is so intricately linked to the company’s future, and its share price, indicates the power of Jobs’ persona.

Like his admirers, I love this man and his company for the visionary gadgets they come out with, though I must confess the only Apple gadget I have is an iPod shuffle which I won in an online contest.

Reading about Jobs made me wonder if there will ever come a time when a Malaysian can shake up the IT industry worldwide in the same manner.

When will we produce our Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the founders of Google? Or a Mark Zuckerburg of Facebook? Or Sabeer Bhatia, the founder of Hotmail?

Impossible? Not. Because these people availed themselves of a resource that is available to all of us – our brain.

When I was at ISIS Malaysia, the late Tan Sri Noordin Sopiee came up to my section one afternoon and engaged us in an interesting conversation.

If I recall correctly, this was what he said: “We have no control over what God places under our feet. Some countries are lucky and have huge oil reserves or some precious minerals. But God is fair because what he gives us between our ears can take us even further.” And, in typical Noordin style, he concluded, “What we have between our ears is more important than what we have beneath our feet. Think about that!” And he walked away.

The current debate over what language to use to teach science and mathematics has generated a lot of heat. But it would be meaningless if the purpose is to just make our young ones in school understand and regurgitate basic information. The real challenge is if our system can make them think and be a Steve Jobs one of these days.

  • Deputy executive editor Soo Ewe Jin is wondering if he should abandon Bill Gates for Steve Jobs now that his home PC is already five years old.

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