Perhaps the most interesting rivalry in the business world over the last generation has been the competitive battle between Apple and Microsoft. The twists and turns that these two companies have gone through are legend -- as have been the experiences and action of their leaders, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. One interesting way to look at their success is to examine some essence, quality, and core value that was critical to their accomplishment.

On the Apple side, it has been the ability to express people’s individuality through breakthrough technology. From the very beginning, Apple has seen itself as a company doing battle with the establishment, embodied in the perceived IBM-centric world of hierarchy and conformity. With breakthrough, easy to use, people-oriented products, Apple has aimed to break down these barriers, allowing the individual to express his capacities in full. This ability to bring out human individuality is one of the hallmarks of Apple’s values, drive, and success. The result has been products that have revolutionized the computer world, and indeed the world at large.

In the years I have observed Microsoft’s success, an almost opposite quality, essence, and value stands out. It is an extraordinary ability to collaborate with its partners and users. Microsoft at every stage has sought to open itself to creating relationships with hardware vendors, corporations, and users in order to extend its technology into the wider sphere. When Microsoft developed its original DOS personal computer operating system, it encouraged dozens of PC manufacturer to use it. That more open-ended model continued with the release of Windows and then Windows Mobile. Likewise, any developer who has worked with the company knows how they have bent over backwards to forge relationships with partners, while expanding Microsoft’s market. The result has been a 90% market share in PC operating systems, creating a company that is a virtual money making machine.

These same two factors -- individuality and collaboration -- are central dynamics of life itself. On the one hand, there is the need to express one’s self and individuality in life, even as there is the necessity to cooperate with others. This is a central dynamic that is perpetually working itself out in society. For example, in America, individuality is there everywhere, almost in the extreme; and yet its collaborative capacities – i.e. its ability to work for the common good, and to cooperate with a collective of nations -- is often sorely lacking. If the US embraced collaboration as much as individuality, it would almost certainly maintain its role of evolutionary leader of the world. In Asia, we see more of the other side, where collaboration is at the forefront, and true individuality is too often missing. That too is working itself out.

Of course, each alone -- individuality or collaboration -- is limited; but a part, not the whole of what is necessary for human progress. However, working in tandem, these two dynamics are fully capable of harnessing the best of society, and releasing the infinite potentials of life.

Individuality and Social Development            

In order to understand the interaction between the individual and the society we must first understand the nature of the relationship between these two. Man is a gregarious species and likes to live in groups rather than alone. Early in his history he seems to have realized that being part of a group confers many advantages such as physical safety, accomplishment of bigger works than he can do by himself and better prospects of finding a mate and raising a family, etc. For these reasons men seem to have consented to form collective societies and seem to have been willing to sacrifice some individual privacy and individual comforts, etc.

So we understand that the relationship between these two is of a complementary nature. The society helps individuals to take better care of themselves and individuals in turn help the society maintain itself by contributing some share of their income and labor for the common welfare. Though theoretically society is there for the benefit of the constituent individuals, at some stage it acquires a personality of its own and at that point its own development acquires more priority than the development of the individuals who are part of it. Therefore it restrains those individuals who do not conform to the existing social standards and who deviate for better or worse. Criminals who do not obey the laws of the society are thrown in jails and thereby prevented from causing any changes in the outer society. 

Those who deviate and differ from society’s existing social customs, beliefs and standards due to their originality, enterprise and pioneering mentality are also considered deviant and many times persecuted as it happened to Galileo, Socrates, Jesus, Martin Luther and Karl Marx. If they are brave and powerful enough to survive the social opposition, then they become leaders of the very same society and lead it to higher stages in knowledge and accomplishment, as evidenced by the events in the life of Darwin, Luther, Gandhiji, etc.

Individuality and Social Development

The following are various points showing the relationship between the expression of one’s individuality and impact on society’s development.

I. Characteristics of Individuality

The following are characteristic actions of individuals which serve the development of society as a whole:

1. Individuality expresses in various ways: 

• B y pursuing a new field
• By changing the rules in an existing field
• By addressing an emergency or pressing problem
• By championing a new cause
• By looking at things in an entirely new way
• By seeing things differently than the collective
• By envisioning a new future
• By trying to solve an intractable problem or issue never addressed before
• By connecting various influences to see a new direction
• By exploring what has not been previously explored
• By challenging prevailing wisdom
• By intuitive a possibility never before thought of

2. Each of these expressions of individuality open a new opportunity, create a new reality for society.

3. Individuals often are immune to being condemned or ostracized. They have a certain thick skin that is oblivious to social condemnation.  Bill Gates was never really bothered about being consider to be and look like a nerd.

4. The individual takes his psychological cues from within. He or she is fiercely committed to an inner vision, despite outer obstacles.

5. Each major progress in society can be correlated to major effort of individuality of an individual or collective.

6. Breaking away from traditional roles -- e.g. seeking education instead of following the family’s lower form of work, such as farming -- enabled greater knowledge, opened up pursuits in various field of life, allowed for greater mobility, personal fulfillment, as well as provided  greater economic and cultural success for society.

7. Deciding to work for one’s self, i.e. to be entrepreneurial, led to vast business expansion and opening to new industries.

8. Exploring new areas of work, such as those who broke away from the mainframe computer tradition and developed the personal computer, opened up vast power for society, including vastly greater organization, productivity, and knowledge.

9. Rejecting arranged or socially acceptable marriages and marrying for love changed the dynamic of romantic relationships throughout the world, leading to greater fulfillment and happiness amongst the population.

10. Women freeing themselves from traditional roles not only led to their greater personal fulfillment through career, but expanded the work force, enriched it with women’s perspective, and otherwise added energy and prosperity of society.

11. Persons who take to individuality often are risk takers; risking to do what they believe is right, best, despite what others believe. Thus, individuality and various facets of strength are often together.

12. Individuality can express at various planes; e.g. mentally to explain new ideas; vitally to explore new methods, techniques, technologies, forms of trade, business, etc; physically to scale mountain heights and explore the depths, be a military hero, and other physical feats.

13. Individuality can also express in a continuum from outward through physical action to inward such as a pioneer thinker. The brave soldier who wins the battle through his act on one extreme, and the spiritual pioneer who dares to explore new way of consciousness from within at the other.

14. Many of the most influential individuals in history were self-motivated, self-reliant, thought for themselves, were undeterred by the herd view, others’ opinions; had disregard for tradition, convention, procedures, moral and social codes.

II. Examples of Outstanding Individuality in Different Fields

1. Pioneers are ‘individuals’ who awaken and spur on society. E.g. Luther, Gorbachev, Churchill, Gandhi. Spiritual individuals too, like Jesus, Buddha, Sri Aurobindo, and Karmayogi.

2. Gorbachav single-handedly pursued a new course for his nation through perestroika and glasnost enabled the complete collapse of a dying government system, opening a new, better one, while saving the world from the threat of nuclear exchange with the end of the Cold War.

3. Churchill pursued full engagement against the fascists, when the society around him was lethargic in this pursuit, helped galvanize the society to pursue a war it won and thereby overcome the continents and the world’s ruinations through oppression.

4. Buddha broke away from his wealthy, aristocratic family to pursue the truth of suffering in the world, changing the course of religious and spiritual history, and the benefits derived from it.

5. Steve Jobs envisioned things that were hardly in sight -- like the personal computer, the graphic user interface,  -- when others were going about the tradition in the computer field. As a result, the personal computer was established, changing the organization of society. (The Homebrew Computer Club did the same when it gathered to champion a personal computer, thereby expressing the “individuality of the collective”.) Jobs practiced individuality by ‘thinking different,’ creating groundbreaking products that fostered greater individuality for those who used them.

6. Ted Turner unconventionally believed news could be broadcast on TV 24 hours a day, enabling the founding of CNN, giving the world access to visual global information and events in an instant. E.g., it had a great impact in helping the bringing down of the Berlin War and thus the end of the Cold War.

7. Fred Smith believed in possibility of overnight delivery of mail for businesses throughout the US, founding FedEx, changing the nature of business -- in particular its speed, timeliness -- forever.

8. President Kennedy sought a “different way” in solving the Cuban Missile Crisis, coming up with a solution that resolved the dire situation, sparing humanity’s destruction.

9. Luther’s individualistic action to confront the church enabled more individualistic religious worship. (It also fostered democracy, which tends to support individuality.)

10. Sri Aurobindo expressed his Individuality by not pursuing independence for India through outer means, but through ‘inner action.’ He envisioned the result in the subtle plane, which then manifest in the outer one through his inner power, evolving that society to new freedom and possibility.

11. The Mother was a spiritual individual who dared to undertake the transformation of her physical being through the action of the Force on her cells, an unprecedented undertaking in history.

12. Bill Wilson broke with the tradition of drunks being mere outcasts, and saw a new way of rehabilitating them through group discussions, leading to his founding of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA).

13. Rhonda Byrne dares to be different by gathering experts in the area together (rather than relying on her own knowledge) to create the film and book The Secret, opening up many in the world to having a new view of the nature ofs reality.

14. The conscientious objector not only was able to abstain from military service for what they perceived as good cause, but paved the way for the military to be more tolerant of different points of view amongst its constituents, and ushered in society overall ability to question a government’s military objectives and actions.

III. Role of Individuals in Major Social Advances

1. We can also work backwards and indicate every major social change (or social development) and trace it back to not only a person’s or collective effort, but how they thought and acted through their individuality.

2. There were at least a dozen major changes in the 60s, which can be traced to pioneers who expressed their individuality. In the award-winning TV series ‘Mad Men,’ we even see the origins of the social changes of the 60s in the conservative, 50s-type lifestyles of the Madison Avenue advertising executives.

3. It is hard to know who are the true originals of the beat and hippy movements, as we mainly observed as a collective movement. But there was certain original true individuals. This would then be true of other major social developments in history. To find the true individual, you have to dig deep. The individuals we often identify in modern times are the obvious ones who have a dramatic presence on the scene. But there are true individuals much deeper down.

4. The society fosters individuality as a result of certain people expressing their individuality that created these new social conditions.

5. The Neanderthals never progressed because their society was one of convention and non-change. It died out. Societies that express individuality, progress, as the human did who flourished in the wake of the Neanderthal’s eventual failure.

6. Richard Florida’s books on the creatively savvy cities that flourish in America tell us that they do so because these municipalities encourage creativity and individuality.

7. Collectives that encourage individuality create individuals who make the society further develop, progress, and evolve.

8. Thus individuality and collective social progress work in both directions.