The book is about lives and ideas, and how they mix together. At its core it’s a book of stories about people, and what those people managed to create. It’s the first book I’ve written that’s fundamentally non-technical—and I’m hoping all sorts of readers without deep technical interests will be able to enjoy it.
There’s a common stereotype that techies like me aren’t interested in people. But for some reason I always have been. Yes, I like computers and abstract ideas and those sorts of things very much, and I certainly spend a great deal of my time on them. But I also like people, and find them interesting. And no doubt that has something to do with why I’ve chosen to spend the past 30 years building up a company that is—like any company—full of people.
One of the things I always find particularly interesting about people is their life trajectories. I’ve been fortunate enough to mentor many people, and I hope to have had a positive effect on many life trajectories. But I also find life trajectories interesting for their own sake—as things to understand and learn from.
Idea Makers is in a sense an exploration of a few life trajectories whose intellectual output happens to have intersected with my own. Some of the people in the book are extremely well known; others less so. I had all sorts of different reasons for writing the pieces that have ended up in the book. Sometimes it was to celebrate an anniversary. Sometimes because of some event. And sometimes—sadly—it was because the person they’re about just died. And although I didn’t plan it this way, the sixteen people in the book turn out to represent an interesting cross-section. (Yes, it would have been nice to have a bit more diversity among them, but unfortunately, with my subjects being from past generations, it didn’t work out that way.)