“This video is from a series called Entrepreneurs, that documents the creation of NeXT. The real gems here are the way that Steve interacts with the team, shooting down what he feels are silly ideas and encapsulating several minutes of brainstorming with explicit goals,” Matthew Panzarino reports for TNW.
“As pointed out by commenter Sho_hn on Hacker News, the woman who stands up to Jobs (11:00 minute mark) about the due date being part of his ‘reality distortion field’ is Joanna Hoffman, of the original Macintosh team.,” Panzarino reports. “She had a reputation for being the one to lock horns with Jobs and was even given an award internally by the team two years running for doing so.”
More videos, info, and links in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “krquet” for the heads up.]
Awesome, raw glimpse into a genius creating his craft. Wow!
Wow, what a fascinating video. His focus and energy are remarkable….
What a total legend Steve Jobs is.
RIP Steve.
Unadulterated gems, pure and simple.
The things that are clear in this video:
1) employees were not just “poor victims” of Job’s “despotic terror” — they all could talk to each other the most honest way, without rounding corners. The same was confirmed by other sources.
2) Jobs was, as always, pushing on the impossible: spring 1987 release date and $3000 price tag. In the end, perfectionism would not allow him to release “junk”, so Next Cube was postponed and priced higher. This, however, would severely tamper with adoption rates and eventually made hardware part of the company “the first who did not make it”, instead of “the last who made it”.
The video was interesting. I saw a lot of similarities between the conversations during the initial NeXT retreat and those in which I have participated for project startups. The key to success lies in that initial discussion – what are we going to do and why are we going to do it? The “how” part comes afterwards, but it will only be successful if the “what” and “why” are clearly established at the very beginning and maintained as the core vision throughout the process.
Intersting to see how he targeted higher education. I worked for many years in higher education. Bogged down by burocracy and institutional mentality, that could have never been a large enough market to have worked for NEXT.
Impressive focus, passion and vision.
Anyone recognize the people in the room?
I loved this. What an insight -especially as he describes the “inverse pyramid” he saw as a result of the engineering of the Apple ][e. And what a hoot that the filmmakers had the balls to ask Steve Jobs walk through a field looking around like they just caught him out on a stroll at the end!
The wonderful, thankfully old, world of analog video tape.
*Tracking*Tracking*
From an organizational behavior perspective, direct interface with Jobs and his cohorts, as seen here, is priceless. Toss away the abstractions. In the trenches, how do people effectively work together? How do people balance the accounts book with the creativity black box? What is realistic, what is hair brain fantasy, what is within a team’s abilities, what needs help.
Learn from picking up from the direct experiences of others as well as person experience. Stay as direct and focused on outer and inner experience as possible. That is where you learn what a group can be and how you personally are able to work within a group within your personal limits as well as undeveloped abilities.
There are no machine unit humans.
There is no ideal system within which to conform.
Diversity rules.
Dynamic is the process.
Jobs was never perfect, but watching him is inspiring.
+1
Interesting.
A black turtleneck …. under a white shirt and suspenders?? Hoodies? V-Necks? I was beginning to fear I’d see him wearing a tie!
Steve was right. Not meeting the time frame and cost limits (stake in the ground) ultimately did kill the hype bubble around NEXT. He also clearly went into it with dreams far beyond his own ability to fund, perhaps overly assuming his new “team” would work tirelessly for little more than the thrill of achievement. Unfortunately for an idealistic Jobs, money really does run the world.
Also interesting to hear Steve admit getting steamed at a worker’s assertion “I can’t do anything because I don’t know what people want”. His response was the same then, as was also reported in his Bio, “Show us something, and we’ll decide if it’s good or not”. He clearly didn’t like tag-alongs and followers who would not innovate for themselves and bring forth new ideas.
Yet, if not for his innovative work at Next, regardless of whether it proved successful at the time, Apple would be a mere shadow, if at all, of what it is today.