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As at the end of each life, especially those that are lived in public, one tries to make sense of the achievements and to leave a legacy. Many tributes were paid to Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft, who died on October 15 at the age of 65 following a cancer.
The problem with Allen, however, is the problem with polymaths: nothing alone defines who they are. The cryptographer you know can be your friend's sculptor. Or, the electric car entrepreneur can also be the explorer of the space. Which one is it and who is it to say? The polymath cares less about everything, motivated more by the pursuit of ideas and interests than by the way they are perceived.
Known first for creating Bill Gates, the world's largest software company, Allen left Microsoft in 1983 following clashes with Gates and the reinstatement of his cancer treatments. He became a billionaire overnight when Microsoft became public in 1986. The next decade he tried to forge a technological legacy, but a combination of ideas ahead of his time and poor management prevented him . Still, Allen remains in the spotlight because of the wealth that keeps him on the Forbes Richest People list and his affiliation with Microsoft, which dominated the world of technology.
Since joining Allen, Allen has also been seen in other ways: a great philanthropist who has dedicated hundreds of millions of dollars to important causes such as brain science, cancer research and the fight against cancer. against the disease. He often lent his megayacht, Octopus, for search and recovery operations. He was also a space geek, who funded the development of an X Award-winning Ansari spacecraft and a double-hull aircraft carrier to reach the edge of the earth's atmosphere. . He was very popular with sports fans for his Portland Trail Blazers and Seattle Seahawks. He transformed Seattle, his hometown, by funding projects that make the city more livable and attractive. Music legend Quincy Jones said Allen could sing and play guitar like Jimi Hendrix. He held 43 patents under his name.
So who was Paul Allen? While many of Allen's projects have been simultaneously in the spotlight since his death, headlines have attempted to summarize his life's work in an orderly manner: "Paul Allen remembered sport, technology, donations "and" From Microsoft to the Space Race "and" After Paul Allen co-founded Microsoft, he changed brain science forever. There is little consensus on where to place impact and define critical moments.
I personally know the challenge of slapping a label on Allen. When writing his biography in 2003, I had the difficult task of finding a center for his story because he was both a polymathic man and a man until his death, always looking for a clear post-Microsoft identity. But now, in this moment of reflection, it seems useful to ask the following question: Can you get great fame and succeed as a polymath?
Unlike many iconoclasts worthy of a biographical study, Allen is not synonymous with a company, an invention, an idea or a moment of life. l & # 39; history. The myth of Microsoft creation is an old and a goodie, but it does not tell the whole story of Allen. It was not just – not only– the co-founder of Microsoft.
This contrasts sharply with the way we think about who becomes famous.
This is not serious how much in life, there seems to be a collective cognitive disability to deal with more than one major achievement of a person. So we have Bill Gates, famous for building Microsoft; Henry Ford who built the T model; Mark Zuckerberg who brought us Facebook.
But all these people – all of us – do so much more.
These are beautiful, simple stories that give us a shortcut to the way we talk about these leaders and innovators. It does not matter that Henry Ford's biggest impact is the assembly line, or that Gates can solve one or more of the world's biggest humanitarian crises. (Zuckerberg is still in its infancy, so we will have to look and see, but he has already started his own philanthropic venture with the humble goal of curing all the illnesses in his daughter's life.)
The story is dotted with examples of famous individuals who were also polymaths: Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo, Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, among them, have brought many benefits and advances to their societies. Yet their achievements – many of which enrich our lives every day – we often miss, with excessive emphasis on a singular genius. As in the case of a restricted multiple-choice menu, the story too often chooses one of its many achievements and slap. Maybe we are not comfortable with the idea of someone so familiar with so many things. Being good in one thing is a sufficient challenge for most of us.
It is difficult to identify a polymath. When I researched Allen for my book, I asked my sources – his friends and colleagues, past and present – what motivated him and how they defined him. Some of them spoke of him at the opposite of Gates, as they existed only one in relation to each other and to a unique narrative of l & # 39; other. Allen was "more laid-back" and "more casual" than Gates. As I wrote about these conversations, "Even those who have known Allen for years still have a hard time defining him because he's always looking for new areas and finding new things that interest him." ". Or, in his own words, "Even as a child, every year I was interested in something different," he told Fortune in 1994.
At the time of publication, we called it the "accidental Zillionaire", borrowing from a Wired story of the same name. Allen was still perceived as a technology figure. He had launched a few companies with big ambitions that had failed, while benefiting from a company with which he had nothing left to do. By pouring a lot of his millions of dollars into these flawed designs, he ended up giving it the impression that Microsoft had no chance.
Of course, Microsoft had not been Allen's bad luck any more than Gates's. It's Allen who convinced Gates to work with him on a programming language in 1975 that eventually led to Microsoft's training. Gates had the chutzpah to make great promises to his first client, Altair, then more famous to IBM, software that did not exist; Allen saved the day every time by producing this revolutionary software. Without Allen, there would be no Microsoft, period. And if it were not Gates, there would be no mega success Microsoft as you know.
Allen's legacy is perhaps that there is no singular genius and that we should embrace the multi-interested among us, the Renaissance man, the team player. There are signs that we could go in that direction. The concert economy does not lend itself to a single legacy when you drive your Uber car to your Airbnb home to design graphics for work done with UpWork. Of course, working in a concert is not the same as simultaneously healing cancer and improving football. But it's on the right track. Individuals and their contributions to society are multifaceted and never really fit for a title or presentation text.
In the end, Allen may have been right with the title of his book, "Idea Man," as bland and tepid as it is. He may have better understood, himself, that there was not a single invention, undertaking or pursuit that could ever best represent his life and him, but a series of interstices. them that he would continue to generate. Or at least, standing in the long shadow of Bill Gates, it may be that he wishes it.
Laura Rich is the author of Paul Allen's biography, "The Accidental Zillionaire" and founder of Exit Club, a group of entrepreneurs who are leaving their company.
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