I'm always surprised that more billionaires don't try interesting off the wall projects when they have so much money. What's the fun of having it, if you can't have the occasional mad scientist moment.
As Musk has stated, he was one more failed SpaceX launch from pretty much being bankrupt. As a "mad scientist", it's pretty easy to blow your money on ideas that don't quite pan out.
Science fiction author David Brin has some interesting suggestions for philanthropists looking to create a legacy, such as building a third-world university system, financing a freelance manned mission to Mars, or funding whistleblowers.
In Australia we have Clive Palmer. He's building a replica Titanic and a mechatronic Jurassic Park. And now has his own Political party named after himself with candidates in every seat in the country.
It's rare that the creative types end up being billionaires. Note that even Steve Jobs was kicked out of his own company, and then later only barely squeaked into the CEO slot, and only because the company was about dead anyway. He'd never have gotten the job if Skulley hadn't screwed things up quite so bad.
Yeah, if anything Steve Jobs was exactly the "business type" your parent is speaking about.
“I was so close to Steve Jobs I could never really see the transition,” Wozniak said. “I just wanted to be in engineering only – I never wanted to run a company, never wanted to run things, step on other people – Steve very clearly did, and wanted to be a top executive and a really important thinker in the world.”[1]
I think Jobs is definitely a creative type, he had a clear and distinct vision that went beyond what most CEO's would ever dream of let alone approve to drive resources into.
Being a creative type does not necessarily mean being an engineer.
Absolutely, but his vision (the Lisa) was the wrong vision at the time. He refined his vision at next (taking in a lot of other people's good ideas along the way) and returned to Apple at just the right time: when the average consumer was ready to pay a bit more for a refined product.
