Why will Microsoft and Apple fail?

EDITORS NOTE: This commentary first appeared in the January issue of Business Reform magazine.

Bill Gates and Steve Jobs represent the pinnacle of entrepreneurial dreams – taking companies literally from the garage to the top of global financial markets. However, free market success and technical brilliance don't last when paired with unhealthy pride and self-deemed invincibility. Without a change in personal and corporate character, these players are doomed to failure.

"The Pirates of Silicon Valley" should be required viewing for every businessperson. Although already very popular with technologists, the lessons provided in this film are broadly applicable across all industries.

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"The Pirates of Silicon Valley" is, at its essence, about entrepreneurship. Working out of their garage and scrapping together some money for lunch everyday, two Steves (Steve Jobs, played by Noah Wyle of "ER" fame, and Steve Wozniak) begin work on an invention that most people and bankers eschew. Enter, the "personal computer."

The movie entertainingly shifts from one ironic scene to the next. For example, Hewlett-Packard, as it happens, has the right to any inventions that Steve Wozniak comes up with because he works for HP from time to time. Yet, in reference to his invention, a company executive asks, "What would ordinary people want with a computer?" In this movie, irony flows like water.

What ensues is a wonderfully engaging tangle of deceit and revenge of which I will not deprive you by dwelling on it here. Instead, let's focus on the real morals of this story, of which there are two.

The first one – at least through a biblical grid – deals with pride. Although the movie glorifies the fact that two different companies within the same industry were able to revolutionize business forever, it also uncovers the destructive power of the unhealthy pride demonstrated by major and minor players throughout the film.

In the personal computer revolution, the two main players each had a different focus, a different product, a different overall strategy, but, as it turns out, the same business ethic. The industry was not computers or software: the industry was information. While Apple focused on the hardware and creative software, Microsoft focused on the operating system software.

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In the film, Apple runs its business like a slave ship, forcing creativity through hours of work and competition within its own organization, obviously ignoring Jesus' words: "If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand" (Mark 3:25).

Bill Gates, played by Anthony Michael Hall ("The Breakfast Club"), on the other hand, fresh from Harvard and running his company from a hotel room in Albuquerque, focuses on the customer's needs. Before pulling off one of the greatest business deals in history, and one that became the first stone in Microsoft's empire, Mr. Gates says, "How you survive, you make people need you. You survive because you make them need what you have. Then, they have nowhere else to go." Gates, with this in mind, convinces IBM into thinking that what he is offering them, Gates' operating system, is necessary to their business. IBM takes the bait and the rest, again, is history.

What we learn in this movie is what the Bible already teaches. "The Pirates of Silicon Valley," however, provides a nice modern-day illustration of that truth. Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and Xerox all provide examples of mighty giants felled by corporate pride, but the most impactful example is the personal story of Steve Jobs. Mr. Jobs comes to find truth in these words: "Pride goes before destruction, And a haughty spirit before a fall" (Proverbs 16:18). After losing the marketplace battle to Gates, Jobs is fired by the Apple board and can only watch as Microsoft takes over the industry. Of course, years later, Apple brings Jobs back to be CEO, but by this time Microsoft owns part of the company. Watching the movie, we all hope that Mr. Jobs has learned some important lessons.

The second – and highly applicable – moral of the story, however, is not shown in the movie because it has not happened yet. It is, however, just a matter of time. You see, what these corporations did was improve communication to the point at which almost nothing is impossible for them. But we've seen this before, in the Tower of Babel account in Genesis, in which the people improve communication to the point at which God says that nothing is impossible. The problem, however, is their hearts – more specifically, their pride. Because of this, God destroys their plans and the tower never gets built.

The parallel: if you think Microsoft, or Apple for that matter, is a great company, you are only fooling yourself. Great companies stand the test of time; they are multi-generational. Even though their beginnings were spectacular and these companies have not yet failed in regard to the stock market or market share, in respect to their virtue and business sense they have already been tested and failed miserably, as this movie successfully illustrates. The true Goliath eventually will come tumbling down. Maybe not now, or even in the next few years, but it will happen.

God, after all, will not be mocked.

Read the full review of "The Pirates of Silicon Valley," along with many other great features in the most recent issue of Business Reform magazine.

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