“If Steve Jobs’s life were staged as an opera, it would be a tragedy in three acts,” Brent Schlender writes for Fast Company. “And the titles would go something like this: Act I–The Founding of Apple Computer and the Invention of the PC Industry; Act II–The Wilderness Years; and Act III–A Triumphant Return and Tragic Demise.”
“That second act–The Wilderness Years–would be altogether different in tone and spirit [from Acts I and III]. In fact, the soul of this act would undermine its title, a convenient phrase journalists and biographers use to describe his 1985 to 1996 hiatus from Apple, as if the only meaningful times in Jobs’s life were those spent in Cupertino,” Schlender writes. “In fact, this middle period was the most pivotal of his life. And perhaps the happiest. He finally settled down, married, and had a family. He learned the value of patience and the ability to feign it when he lost it. Most important, his work with the two companies he led during that time, NeXT and Pixar, turned him into the kind of man, and leader, who would spur Apple to unimaginable heights upon his return.”
Schlender writes, “Indeed, what at first glance seems like more wandering for the barefoot hippie who dropped out of Reed College to hitchhike around India, is in truth the equivalent of Steve Jobs attending business school.”
Much, much more in the extensive full article – recommended – here.
[Attribution: TUAW. Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Lynn Weiler” for the heads up.]