“Wunderkind. Jerk. Innovator. Tyrant. (All of the above.) Even now, almost four years after his death, it’s hard to read a story about Steve Jobs that doesn’t rely on these kinds of generic labels to explain his character, that doesn’t paint him as an obstreperous ingrate who never changed, who cowed coworkers and competitors with an almost magical ‘reality distortion field,'” Rick Tetzeli writes for Fast Company.
“It’s a strange phenomenon, given the extraordinary story of his life: A callow businessman, a young college dropout whose behavior was so divisive and undisciplined that he was exiled in 1985 from the company he founded, turns around and becomes the radically effective visionary leader of a company that became the most valuable enterprise on earth. Surely this can’t be explained by a set of stereotypes that haven’t changed for three decades,” Tetzeli writes. “‘You should call your book Don’t Try This at Home,’ Bill Gates told us. ‘That’s the degree of difficulty of what Steve achieved.'”
“Thinking of his career and life as a fluid history changes what we can learn from Jobs. It changes his legacy and how we have to think about the future of Apple. What follows here are three unconventional assessments—and the ways in which they continue to drive the company Steve launched,” Tetzeli writes. “(Our book, Becoming Steve Jobs, which is being published by Crown on March 24, offers more, and fuller, insights.) For starters, we have to reconsider Steve’s image as a solitary genius who on his own simply willed breakthrough products into existence.”
Much more in the full article – highly recommended – here.
MacDailyNews Take: Giant.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Carlos from Bogotá” for the heads up.]
Related articles:
Steve Jobs: ‘I just don’t like television. Apple will never make a TV again’ – March 13, 2015
Tim Cook reportedly offered Steve Jobs his liver, but Jobs refused – March 12, 2015
Gruber: ‘Becoming Steve Jobs’ is a remarkable new book – March 3, 2015