Passion, Optimism, Innovation — Understanding Steve Jobs; Review Of ‘Make Something Wonderful’ Book
It was January 9, 2007. A Fifty-Year-Old man having a light salt and pepper beard, donning a black turtle-neck sweater with circular, wire-rim glasses walked onto the stage at the Macworld event. The hall was jampacked. In a historical speech, he unveiled the product that was about to change the world once and for all. It was none other than Apple’s legendary, charismatic leader Steve Jobs.
“An iPod, a phone, and an Internet communicator. An iPod, a phone… Are you getting it? These are not three separate devices; this is one device. And we are calling it iPhone.”
Steve Jobs Archive has recently published a new book on Steve Jobs called ‘Make Something Wonderful’, almost a decade later after the demise of Apple’s legendary co-founder. The book that spans from his college days to his resignation from Apple is a compilation of Jobs’ personal notes including memos, emails, interviews, and speeches.
It aims to help us to understand the legendary leader Steve Jobs in his own words. An easy-to-read, very detailed, and properly categorised book won’t take much time.
“Your time is limited, so don’t waste living someone else’s life.” ~ Steve Jobs
An insightful book gives us a sneak peek via personal notes inside the life of the man behind tech giant Apple, how it started, how it went, all ups and downs, his values, mottos, and principles, and how it finally ended.
The book has been divided into three parts — Part I (1976–1985), Part II (1985 -1996) & Part III (1996–2011). All parts are containing memos to Apple and Pixar teams, emails to teams and himself, interviews to publishers and journalists, and speeches at colleges or Apple’s events.
Part I (1976 — 1985) — The Making Age
The most important thing I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices is to remember that I’ll be dead soon.
Giving a snapshot of Steve Jobs’ young life when he was a grad student to creating a billion dollar Tech Company in a decade, the book takes the help of Jobs’ speeches and recordings to construct how all it started.
Passion, Innovation, And Optimism — These are the core motto of Steve Jobs based on which he runs his life.
The book explores in great depth and length how he integrated these values in the life to carry out day-to-day operations of Apple, figuring out what and how to build things that would sale in the market.
Passion
He was a passionate guy who loves to take risks. Steve Woz and he started Apple in his parents’ garage in 1976 in Los Altos, California. Woz was working at Hewlett-Packard while he was working at the gaming company Atari as a designer. Both of them left their high-paying, secure jobs to start Apple.
“We may fail, but we have no responsibility now, no wives, no kids, no house payments, nothing. If we don’t do this now, we never will. We have nothing to lose — the worst we’ll get out of this is that we’ll have the memories of having gone for it,” Steve Jobs wrote to himself in 2005 before the Stanford commencement speech.
Another moment when he showed his risk-taking mindset is when he dropped out from reed college during his grad days. He believed classes weren’t helping him make to realise his aims and goals. Not finding them any valuable, he dropped out of classes.
Jobs said in the Standford commencement speech, “It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned Coke bottles for the five-cents deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the seven miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple.”
Innovation
Steve Jobs believes in the power of creativity and innovation. Throughout his life, he tries to imbue the values into the corporation’s soul in every possible way.
“One of things I always tried to coach myself on was not being afraid to fail”
He loved building things and was always passionate about them.
He reminisced in his commencement speech about how taking classes of calligraphy during his grad days turned out one of the best things he ever did. Later, he applied his philosophy of linking technology with liberal arts and used typography and spaced fonts in Mackintosh, the first time ever use in a personal computer.
Part II (1985 -1996) — The Rebuilding Age
“You never achieve what you want without falling on your face a few times”
The book's second part deals intricately with Steve Jobs’ life after he was thrown out from Apple due to a divergence of view. He remained optimistic and kept ‘Never-Give-Up’ attitude despite facing the worst situation of an entrepreneur. It’s interesting to read how he starts his new ventures and makes them excel no matter what the odds are.
Optimism
Steve got fired from Apple after his vision and board of directors diverged. Having been thrown out of his own company was a deep, painful shock for him. But it turned out a boon in disguise.
“The years after Steve left Apple were among the toughest of his career — and the most formative.”
The book talks about how he started his own computer company called NeXT with several members of Macintosh. He invested a lot of amount in a small animation company called ‘Pixar’ that would be going to produce record-breaking movies such as Toy Story, Finding Nemo, Incredible, so on.
“Character is built not in good times, but in bad times.”
It wasn’t a rosy path. The entire decade defined that Apple wasn’t a beginner’s luck. He again run two companies from scratch and turned them profitable by shifting the focus of NeXT to software and Pixar to movies for all generations. He also showed the power of creativity by enabling running DNA simulations into the computer for faster results.
A while later, most of NeXT team left when they couldn’t see any positive future. Steve Jobs remained optimistic and adamant about his endeavours.
This marks the true sign of leadership as he always remained optimistic about his purpose in life. He considered himself a builder whose life revolved around building tech products.
“What you follow with your heart will indeed come back to make your life much richer.” Steve Jobs said while addressing the students of the Palo Alto High School graduation in June 1996.
Emphasizing the equation of creativity, Steve Jobs said, “Be a creative person. Creativity equals connecting previously unrelated experiences and insights that others don’t see.”
Part III (1996–2011) Conquering The World
“Much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out be priceless later on.”
The third and last part of the book deals with Steve Jobs returning at Apple, redirecting company’s efforts to build breakthrough products including iPod, iPhone, iPad, so on, and giving a new life to failing and loss-making companies.
Excellent Leader
Nothing but a leader can steer a company toward the path of profitability. Apple bought NeXT and so Steve returned to Apple as an interim CEO. The company changed drastically from the last time he left it. He revamped the values and production lines to make it again profitable.
“We believe that people with passion can change the world for the better.”
“And those people that are crazy enough to think that they can change the world are the ones that actually do.”
His leadership qualities are so high that Apple didn’t lose people by switching under his term. Steve Jobs quoted, “In terms of people, our retention has gone way up. We’re losing hardly any people from the company now. And we’re hiring incredibly good people into the company.”
Focus On Rebranding and Marketing
He sensed the clutter in Apple’s product lines, confusing customers about what they should buy. He started rebranding Apple’s core values and marketing in creative ways.
“And so, what we’re going to do, in our first brand-marketing campaign in several years, is to get back to that core value.”
“We are having to make guesses four or five, six months in advance, about what the customers want.”
Both Apple and Pixar moved forward to write annals with their phenomenal success — one in technology from iPod to iPhone and another one in animation pictures from Toy Story to Finding Nemo.
He took the philosophy of Abraham Maslow on the hierarchy of needs and customized to make it applicable to Apple and its employees.
We Did It!
“iMac was the number one selling computer in the US during the month of the November in 1998 in US.”
Visionary Mindset
Apple opened its first retail store in the world in 2001. He built up the Genius or Geek Bar in the store to let customers interact with the person behind and solve their queries whatever they have regarding Apple products.
“In May 2001, Steve recorded a private tour of the first Apple store for an audience of software developers.”
Excellence
Steve Jobs said ‘Excellence’ was his favourite quote. He once emailed employees, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. ~ Aristotle.”
Jobs gave a lot of consideration before hiring people for his companies. He believed hiring the right person is half the battle done.
“The most important lesson I ever learned was that you have to hire people better than you are.”
Grab the chance
He interestingly told how he met his wife and life partner in Stanford’s business school accidentally. He came there after an invitation and saw her. When he finally saw her in the parking lot, he asked her out for a date. She nodded. Hence, eighteen months later, they tied the knot.
“You can’t plan to meet the people who will change your life. It just happens. Maybe its random, maybe its fate. Either way, you can’t plan for it. But you want to recognise it when it happens and have the courage and clarity of mind to grab onto it.
The famous biographer Walter Isaacson wrote a comprehensive and well-detailed biography with the eponymous name ‘Steve Jobs’. It’s a wonderful book, indeed. And there’s one of the most viewed speeches of Jobs at the commencement speech in Standford in 2005.
But nothing matches to understand Steve Jobs in his own words. It helps to go deeper into the mind of a genius and tries to decipher what makes him a Steve Jobs. It provides his way of thinking to deal with every situation and respond to every success and failure. A true leader, businessman, and innovator whose glory hasn’t faded a bit even after he left us a decade ago.
