Amidst a sea of IP vultures, Web 2.0 success stories, buzzwords and new market capitalizations, are a handful of individuals whom I respect (sometimes grudgingly!) and whose examples we could stand to learn something from.

I’ve long been of the opinion that business school is in large part for suckers. A university is in every way a business, and I’d be willing to bet that part of the lesson you learn in earning a business degree is that you just gave a company a large sum of money for something that is, in effect, largely ethereal. I’m a big proponent of learning by doing, though a little independent study doesn’t hurt either.

Anyway, the other day I was thinking that I’d like to learn a little bit more about some of these folks. (But not too much, because if I’m gonna copy somebody I may as well work for them.)

And then BusinessWeek does a big ol’ story on Microsoft’s J Allard.

They do the whole song and dance about how he’s a firebrand, a guy who does his thinking outside the box and is one of the key torch carriers that will reshape, revitalize and reinvigorate Microsoft in the wake of Bill Gates’ departure for the coming decades. They talk about how extreme he is, with his mountain biking and his fast cars, his lust for speed and his disdain for gravity.

“‘I love that gravity is unforgiving,’ he says. He even blazes through e-mail, jotting down notes all in lower case: ‘shift key slows you down,’ he writes.”

Hey, that’s great. So he’s a “corporate suit” who is also “hip” and “edgy.” Why should I care what he does? The Xbox took several years to really show fruition, and it’s only this generation that Microsoft is really seeing the fruits of that gamble. The Zune, Allard’s new project, will likely require a few iterations before it too sees any real success. I think it will, eventually. Like the early Xbox, the Zune is great in concept but poor in execution.

But that’s neither here nor there.

What gets me excited about reading about a fellow who reinvented his self-image in the same way he worked to reinvent his employer, is the “Fuck it, just go and do” attitude he seems to take to the projects he’s undertaken since the guy’s been on my radar.

Reading his biography, people balked when he came on board at Microsoft, and told everyone that the Internet was the future, and that they needed to be on board. Eventually Microsoft got with the program, but can you imagine what things might be like if they’d gotten in the ‘net game say, five years earlier? Or the Xbox – many members of the Microsoft brass thought a dedicated games machine, especially one made in-house would be ridiculous, and the fact that Allard didn’t want it to run Windows? Ludicrous!

(Of course, the Xbox wouldn’t be where it is without Seamus Blackley, but what’s he doing now? Most recent, I see a credit on MobyGames for Psychonauts on the publisher end. Hmm.)

That’s what I like. Coming up with an idea, focusing on a vision, and then drilling into it and ignoring what other people say. Detractors, naysayers. There is, of course, room for adjustment and refinement in your trajectory, but I think it’s boneheaded and counterproductive to run things through a large committee of approvals and analyses. When you are creating something new, you can’t always apply conventional wisdom to it because while that worked for the old ways and old systems of design and management, that only got you the results of old.

I love reading stories like this. This is the kind of education that new entrepreneurs need. Younger guys who give the finger to conventional business tactics and just go straight for the throat.

‘Course, that’s easy to do when you have the backing of a multibillion global corporation behind you. But it’s something to shoot for.