Synopsis of the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Issacson
He wasn’t an easy person. He was brash, passionate, and driven by the idea that he didn’t have time to waste. So he acted in extremes and took big, but calculated, risks. People followed him and trusted his judgements despite his harshness because he was usually right. He was also motivated to ask the right people for help. He used his talent of sizing people up in order to quickly decide if you are a bozo or a genius on his level. A-players. Then he was also great at finding ways to drastically improve whole paradigms within industries young and ancient. As much as people hate the amount of hype and dogma around him, he did a whole lot. The other thing interesting is the dichotomy of his zen Buddhist beliefs and his eventual role as CEO of Apple. I think history might note his unnecessarily mean treatment of people, but his contributions to tech, culture, and industries will always out weight it.
He said he doesn’t believe in market research but I believe he did. Just not research done by a room full of marketing people. He did it himself, with his keen ability to observe, his passion for, and ability make connections between tech and art. I would be interested in knowing what he read daily and how much time he spent educating himself about the world. Conventional structures of school weren’t fast or interesting enough for him so it’s obvious he was learning way faster by observing the world and connecting to mentors. He didn’t trust anyone else to ‘research’ for him and he didn’t want any focus group to shit on ideas he, more quickly, knew to be right. And he was right to be quick about it. Tech moves fast (whether because of him or inspite of him is debatable) and as it turns out he was right about having limited time to change the world.
I the end it makes me think of how schools are taught now. Jobs learned to learn from the world by trial, error, asking questions, and observing. He didn’t try to memorize stuff to pass tests. His education was open and so I think his mind was open to possibilities rather than constructs. He learned to judge, make decisions and take risks while in his early years playing pranks on people. There’s a lot of negotiations and thought needed to pull off good pranks.
And a bit of discipline and luck were in place. He lived in the right place at the right time and with the right people.