My daughter just graduated from college over the weekend, so of course now she wants a car to commute to her new job. That’s fine (since she also has a new job with which to make the payments), and it got me to thinking about the parallels between the core technology of the previous long term economic wave (the combustion engine) compared to the current wave (the microprocessor).

I asked Leo to write about the impact technology will have on mobility, as it represents one of categories of “the utilities of the 21st century” that we identified in last month’s issue. In this months In Focus article, Leo examines the similarities between Henry Ford and Steve Jobs. Both men were extraordinary visionaries who built companies that changed the world, but suffered (and overcame) major setbacks along the way.

The lesson to be learned from both Ford and Jobs is that even the greatest of businessmen can be humbled by failure, as merely creating a market changing product does not ensure everlasting success. In fact, usually just the opposite occurs, as Leo explores in our Sector Spotlight article on Microsoft.

In our Portfolio Update, Tom Scarlett introduces another small company on its way to big success. Just as we recommend huge companies like Microsoft, we also like much smaller companies that are staking out critical real estate along the information superhighway.