Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson: The man, the mystery, the mistakes
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\nAbout the author
\nWalter Isaacson, University Professor of History at Tulane, has been CEO of the Aspen Institute, chairman of CNN, and editor of\xa0Time\xa0magazine. He is the author of\xa0Leonardo da Vinci;\xa0The Innovators;\xa0Steve Jobs;\xa0Einstein: His Life and
Universe;\xa0Benjamin Franklin: An American Life; and\xa0Kissinger: A Biography, and the coauthor of\xa0The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made.
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\n\nAbout the book
\nBased on more than forty interviews with Jobs conducted over two years\u2014as well as interviews with more than a hundred family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues\u2014Walter Isaacson has written a riveting story of the roller-coaster life and searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing.
\nJobs stands as the ultimate icon of inventiveness and applied imagination. He knew that the best way to create value in the twenty-first century was to connect creativity with technology. He built a company where leaps of the imagination were combined with remarkable feats of engineering.
\nAlthough Jobs cooperated with this book, he asked for no control over what was written nor even the right to read it before it was published. He put nothing off limits. He encouraged the people he knew to speak honestly. And Jobs speaks candidly, sometimes brutally so, about the people he worked with and competed against. His friends, foes, and colleagues provide an unvarnished view of the passions, perfectionism, obsessions, artistry, devilry, and compulsion for control that shaped his approach to business and the innovative products that resulted.
\n\nLinks
\nIf you enjoyed this episode, you might also enjoy the episode on the biography of\xa0Elon Musk
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\nBIG IDEA 1 (6:15) \u2013 You don\u2019t have to be perfect to be great.
\nSteve Jobs has a complex, tortured character. His first girlfriend described him as \u2018an enlightened being who is cruel\u2019. This shows you that you don\u2019t need to have your stuff together to create something amazing.
\nA lot of people try to create amazing things, build awesome businesses, try to be perfect or great in all aspects of their life. It\u2019s interesting to see how compartmentalized Steve Jobs was that other aspects of his life didn\u2019t matter that much for him to create something creative and brilliant.
\nBIG IDEA 2 (8:02) \u2013 Get inspired.
\nThroughout his life, Steve was a constant inventor and experimenter. He was always looking for new ideas, links, creative outputs and inputs to look for clarity, escape and inspiration. He started this at a young age through some of the things that he created at his parent\u2019s house. Later in life he and Steve Wozniak would come together and create games and new electronics.\xa0
\nHis trip to India, crazy diets \u2013 only eating raw fruits and vegetables and experimental use of LSD, are all listed down as his sources of enlightenment. During college he convinced Reed University to let him stop his tuition but still stay on campus and only go to classes he wanted to \u2018audit\u2019 them.
\nOne of the early classes that he went to was the calligraphy class. This famously later inspired the fonts available in Mac. He also had a huge love of music, particularly classical music and Bob Dylan. This also provides a huge inspiration into the works that he did for both the Apple products and rethinking music and its distribution.
\nBIG IDEA 3 (10:39) \u2013 Think different.
\nThe reality distortion field \u2013 Steve saw things and possibilities that nobody else could. Many people said they did things that many people believed that they couldn\u2019t do but Steve has a way of making things sound so normal and possible. He would also put incredible faith to people that they could do those things (even if they didn\u2019t think they could). He also believed that people don\u2019t know what they want until you show them.\xa0
\nHe was fastidious for details and had an eye for perfection that many people didn\u2019t see to the same extent he did. For example, Apple HQ in California is designed in such a way that people would bump into each other because he believed that\u2019s when the ideas would naturally flow. The ability and vision he had to think different was always within him.
\nMusic By:\xa0String of Pearls Song by Vic Davi
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