Who will be the next Steve Jobs?
It's a loaded question, to be sure, that inevitably elicits the same answer: No one. Part cultural icon, part tech visionary, and part innovative business leader, Steve Jobs would seem impossible to duplicate.
"He's almost become mythical," said Jim Kouzes, who has been studying CEOs for 30 years as part of the Leadership Challenge Forum, an executive training and research firm. "It's going to be tough for anyone to live up to that standard."
Tough, perhaps, but in Silicon Valley today, there are a handful of candidates to be the next Steve Jobs cut from the same mold as the original: CEO, founder, entrepreneur. Two stand out -- Mark Zuckerberg and Larry Page -- although there are dark horses.
Even Jobs was not always the dominant figure we know today, of course.
"Steve Jobs, through his career, did not always have all those traits" that made him a technology icon, said Jeffrey Pfeffer, professor at Stanford's Graduate School of Business. He grew into the role.
So in evaluating the current candidates, we really need to see who has the potential to reach the same rarefied heights scaled by Jobs and only a handful of other technology leaders.
To see how my candidates measure up, I canvassed a number of experts in corporate leadership to create a list of traits critical to Jobs' success:
"They sometimes have trouble getting to the next idea," said Rosabeth Moss Kanter, a professor at Harvard Business School, who has followed Jobs since his early days. "That art, of having the imagination to see a whole new proposition while you're still making money on something old. Great leaders are able to transition the company into new things, and to challenge their own ideas."
Let's see how the contenders compare. I'll start with Google (GOOG) CEO Page and Facebook CEO Zuckerberg because the size and impact of their companies sets them apart from anyone else in the next generation of tech leaders.
Page, 38: The Google co-founder has the vision thing, starting a search engine when everyone else thought that market was oversaturated. The fact that Page has worked so long with his co-founder, Sergey Brin, and was willing to bring in a more experienced CEO, Eric Schmidt, shows he has good relationship and team-building skills, several observers noted.
And from the start, Google's "don't be evil" mantra and its goal to "organize the world's information" have given employees a rallying point and sense of purpose.
But it's not yet clear whether Page has the ability to take the company beyond its core business of search. Yes, it has nonrevenue hits such as the Android mobile operating system, and its new Google+ social network shows promise.
But Page's ability to take the risks necessary for the company to succeed in areas outside Web search, such as mobile, may well determine where he ultimately ranks.
Zuckerberg, 27: Like Page, Zuckerberg gets strong marks for building a team, in large part for hiring Sheryl Sandberg to be his No. 2. Certainly his vision for a superior social network that has taken the world by storm can't be denied.
Facebook has a mission to allow people to connect and share more of their lives, which seems enough to drive the passion of a small but growing workforce. At the same time, Zuckerberg has been relentless in his drive to change and improve the Facebook platform, through constant tinkering and new features.
Still, we don't know just how solid the company's core business is yet, and we won't until it files to go public. Since the company is young, it hasn't really confronted a moment where it needs to take the risk of pushing beyond social networking as its core business. Zuckerberg needs to show us he can do both before he joins the pantheon of great tech leaders.
Beyond those two, there are other intriguing candidates worth considering:
Reed Hastings, 50: He gets points for having the original vision for Netflix (NFLX), and for helping the company navigate numerous competitive challenges. More importantly, he seems to be guiding the company through a challenging business transition, from DVD rentals to streaming. But can Netflix really become more than a company that serves up online videos?
Elon Musk, 40: Co-founder of PayPal, and now co-founder of Space X and Tesla, Musk has tremendous vision for big ideas that inspire his followers. His reputation as a daring risk taker and entrepreneur is well established. But his track record as a leader rides on whether Tesla's launch of its new electric car next year is a success. If it is, and it transforms the auto industry, then he has a shot at Jobs-like stature.
Marc Benioff, 46: Benioff started Salesforce.com in 1999, making him among the first to see the rise of cloud computing. Benioff is personally dynamic and his dedication to philanthropic causes as well as the company's "no more software" mantra provide employees with a sense of purpose. But can a CEO whose company makes arcane corporate software really assume the iconic role that Steve Jobs did?