Defending Steve Jobs-4 Balancing Forces in the Man behind the Mac

What do you get when you put the brain of a professor, with an American blue collar work ethic in the heart of Silicon Valley? Steve Jobs was one of those people that you either love or hate, partly because he was "either trying to seduce you or telling you you were crap."[i]  Thankfully I never had to work with the guy, but still when I hear him criticized, as a Bay Area citizen I must opine. First, I would point out that he never actually planned on being a business guy or starting a company. He was initially intrigued by the the idea while working nights at Atari and even then, he only allowed himself to work a normal job after he was assured by his Buddhist guide, Kobun Otogawa, that it was possible to keep in touch with his spiritual side while working. At that point he still had a job and he only ventured out on his own after he felt sure he could make a decent living as an engineer. His actions in the business world may be controversial, but even if he did LSD, he never really liked alcohol and although betrayed his friends and got his girlfriend pregnant, he later settled down and effectively adopted his estranged daughter. Beyond i-pods, i-phones and Pixar, Jobs embodied four other paradigm shifts that have since become the norm.

1.Your business and your cause are one. Jobs always saw his work in technology as more than a livelihood but an opportunity to build a better tool for the human mind. Jobs briefly set up a charitable foundation but became annoyed at having to deal with it. For Jobs greatest way to contribute to social causes was to build amazingly useful devices and that made the world a more efficient place and in the end he channeled most of his ideology into his company. This was at the root of his ability to persuade or motivate for Apple. As he said to John Skulley “Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or a chance to change the world?” With Jobs it was  never about promoting his computers, it was about the greater movement. Since then, the popularity of entrepreneurship business as means of attacking social causes has continued to increase.[iii] Businesses now act more like social causes and charitable foundations appear more like businesses. Basic products like shoes (Toms), Unilever and every other food label have to justify their existence through some charitable cause. Indeed it seems you cannot produce a lasting business unless you have a fundamental benefit for the modern world and an equally powerful cause to help the developing one. 

2. The chic geek. Jobs popularized the chic geek and clearly showed that nerdy can be stylish. There were professors and there were rock stars, he was both. Before him computers were large metallic, grey and black. He showed that you can work in a lab with computers and not have to check your sense of style at the door. “Great art stretches the taste, it doesn't follow them.” He would say. He took cues from great Western European architects like Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius and God in the details and clean lines and their modern heirs in the likes of Johny Ive. He also revered the beauty of the Kyoto gardens and the underlying Eastern philosophy and designers like I.M. PEI and Issey Miyake and valued their aesthetic. He set the tone for tech company cultures where smart unorthodox thinking is embraced and glorified. In a sense he epitomized Californian Bay Area, a place where the some of the smartest and most brilliant people are drawn to do high level research, but still retains a very distinct attitude and style, a place where Eastern culture meets the Western system.

 Edwin Catmull, Steve Jobs and John Lasseter fortune.com

3. Simplicity still is the ultimate sophistication. “The lesson Jobs learned from his Buddhist days was that material possessions often cluttered life rather than enriched it." In world that becomes increasingly complex, simple solutions become even more valuable. Jobs never had an entourage, personal staff or security detail and he always made his own calls and drove his own car. He lived up to his own ideals and delivered empowering technology that lifts and enables the most common user.   “Any idiot can make something complex; it takes true intelligence to make something simple.”[iv]  The kind of simplicity referred to doesn't mean a simplicity that ignores complex issues, but that harnesses, harmonizes and balances the opposing complexities into lasting solutions as jobs did in his own life. The ability to to sift through large amounts of data and not lose your humanity and common sense in the process is a trait that Jobs possessed and it is an ability that will be even more valuable as we become laden with more and more data.


4. Shared Ideas in a Closed System. “Good artist copy and great artists steal…We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.”[i] Jobs used good ideas regardless of where they come from or who gets credit for them combining artistic creativity with unabashed hijacking. This attitude is probably also the biggest critique of Jobs in a culture of patents, works cited and copyrights. Steve Jobs disregarded those concerns and just presented the best ideas as his own and incorporated them into his working world. When Jobs first walked into Xerox and was introduced to a graphic user interface he didn’t ask who came up with this or how can we make money on it. He just gushed “this is it!” He later recalled: “It was like a veil being lifted from my eyes. I could see what the future was destined to be.[ii]”  He was far enough ahead and managed to avoid getting bogged down squabbling over where or who they came from. Jobs was quick acting and adaptive partly  because he cared more about making brilliant ideas happen than worrying over who thought of it first.

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[i] Bill Gates 
[ii] Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson p. 98

[ii]  Isaacson p 97

[iii] Michael Porter: Why business can be good at solving social problems http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_porter_why_business_can_be_good_at_solving_social_problems.html

As well as other talks on related topics http://www.ted.com/playlists/139/social_good_inc.html
[iv]Richard Branson