One has to be careful while reading biographies and autobiographies. More often than not, they only tell one side of the story. You need to filter every incidence that is described to decide how much of it you should believe. For biographies, it helps immensely if the biographer has a reputation for telling it as it is. One such name that commands respect is Walter Isaacson. If you want to know more about a controversial character such as Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson’s biography Steve Jobs is the best choice to reveal the man, his faults and his genius.
The mention of Steve Jobs always provokes extreme reactions. One way to deal with his critics is to lay down their arguments before they have a chance to do it. So I will start with some of the notorious faults of Steve Jobs. He was extremely narcissistic, rude and at times, petty. His style of working was to manipulate people, either by praise or by harsh criticism, more often the latter. He shamelessly took credit for other people’s ideas. He had little regard for human feelings. Shouting at people and insulting them was a regular feature at his meetings.
So why are we still talking about him? Because he was a genius and his creativity has transformed the way we live our digital lives. The desktop computer with point-and-click mouse, digital animation movies, smartphone, tablets – Job’s creativity has touched them all.
If there is one thing that sets Jobs apart from almost all Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, it is the fact that he had an intuitive sense of artistic beauty. His favourite slide in a presentation was a sign showing the corner of Technology Street and Liberal Arts Street. He considered his products works of art that would provide an unforgettable experience for the users and enable them to be creative in their own fields. To accomplish this, he sought to control every aspect of the product, starting from the chip to software, design and even the stores where the product is sold. He obsessed over each minute detail till he got it right. He is co-inventor for 112 Apple patents, two of them even related to the staircases that were designed for the Apple stores. The reason Apple users are a cult is because they have been seduced by the beautiful experience that only Apple products can provide.
He had a vision that was uncanny and it enabled him to accomplish things that his rivals could not, even if they had the same resources. A great example is the iPod. “A thousand songs in your pocket” was the tagline for iPod ads. Here’s the thing though. Sony had all the resources and technology to make this product. They had made great audio products in past – Sony Walkman revolutionised the audio market. They had the technology and the resources. What went wrong? For one, different divisions in Sony were at war with each other so they could never come together. Jobs avoided this by making all of his departments work together as a cohesive team.
Sony was also afraid that making a product like iPod would cut into their record sales. This is a classic conundrum faced by every innovator, discussed at great length by Clayton Christensen in his book The Innovator’s Dilemma, that states that people who invent something are usually the last ones to see past it. Jobs was deeply influenced by this book and it showed. “If you don’t cannibalise yourself, someone else will,” he said. And he walked the talk. When iPod sales were skyrocketing, Jobs was already thinking about the next product that would replace it. He realised that mobile phones could serve as music players and he started working on iPhone, even though that meant the death of iPod.
Incidentally, before making the iPhone, Apple tried collaborating with Motorola and they made a product called the ROKR. It was ugly and clumsy, with an arbitrary limit of 100 songs. Jobs was so frustrated with this collaboration that he decided to make the cellphone from scratch.
Jobs also revolutionised the digital music industry. Around 2002, softwares like Napster and Kazaa allowed users to download music for free. The CD sales dropped and the music industry had no idea how to deal with the problem. Jobs convinced them to sell their music on iTunes Store. With the attractive price of 99 cents per song, it combined easy to use technology with a guarantee for song quality. iTunes Store sold a million songs in six days.
Usually, brands get the benefit when famous artists endorse them. Jobs flipped the script. iPod was such a cult phenomenon that when Bob Dylan appeared in an iPod commercial that featured his latest album Modern Times, it became number one on the Billboard chart for its first week, topping Christina Aguilera and Outkast. It was the first time Dylan topped the charts since 1976. Vertigo by U2 was released with a special edition of black iPod with signatures of the band members engraved on its back. Vertigo sold 840,000 copies in its first week and topped the Billboard chart. Bono did the iPod commercial for free because according to him, “U2 will get as much value out of the commercial as Apple will.”
Jobs was a perfectionist. One concept that he imbibed from his father who worked with cars in his workshop, is that a product should be as beautiful from the inside as on the outside, even though no one will ever see it except an occasional technician. So he obsessed over the shoddiness of the soldering dots or the finishing of the screws inside. “A great carpenter isn’t going to use lousy wood for the back of a cabinet, even though nobody’s going to see it,” he used to say.
In the summer of 1985, Jobs visited the computer division of George Lucas’s film studio, Lucasfilm. They made hardware and software for rendering digital images. John Lasseter was the head of computer animation. Lucas wanted to sell the division and Jobs jumped at the chance and made the deal for $10 million, with Jobs owning 70% of the company. Pixar was born. It created a place where Silicon Valley folks could meet and interact with Hollywood folks.
In the beginning, it was not clear how Pixar would earn revenue. They sold the computer to medical industry for image processing CAT scans. Jobs also had an idea to sell the computer at low cost to mass market. Meanwhile, John Lasseter made an animated short called Tin Toy that won the 1988 Academy Award for animated short films. Michael Eisner, CEO, Disney and Jeffrey Katzenberg of the film division liked Tin Toy and asked Lasseter to come work for Disney. Lasseter refused so they ended up collaborating with Pixar. At this point, Jobs had put $50 million of his own money into Pixar. After many negotiations back and forth, they started making Toy Story. It made history to become the top-grossing film of the year, beating Batman Forever and Apollo 13, with a total of $362 million worldwide. Toy Story opened up new avenues for computer generated animation films. Before Toy Story, Jobs was not sure if he would recover the $50 million that he had invested in Pixar. Pixar went public one week after Toy Story opened. The stock shot up to $45 before settling to $39. Job’s investment in Pixar was now worth $1.2 billion but making money was never his goal. When he came back to Apple in 1997, he worked for $1 in pay with no stock options. “I make 50 cents for showing up,” he used to say, “and the other 50 cents is based on performance.” He refused the stock options despite repeated requests from the board. He would have made $400 million had he accepted. Instead, he made $2.50 during that period.
One of Job’s greatest qualities was his ability to focus. This meant not just ignoring distractions, but also to recognise what is important. He used to take his team on retreats and ask them what Apple should focus on next. He would list the ten most valuable suggestions, then remove seven from below and say, “We can only focus on these three.”
Jobs had immense respect for creative people in general and artists in particular. He revered Bob Dylan and The Beatles. He surrounded himself with people who broke the rules. In his own words, “Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently…They push the human race forward.”
