The success of iProducts is undeniable. This phenomenon was the result of a team effort across many years - but also undoubdtfully the vision of a single man, Steve Jobs.

Many of his qualities have been described: negotiation skills, foresight, compelling story-telling… I invite you to go back to the source, to review some of his brillance through his own words.

About Microsoft

Putting up a fight

‘The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste. They have absolutely no taste. And I don’t mean that in a small way, I mean that in a big way, in the sense that they don’t think of original ideas, and they don’t bring much culture into their products. […] I am saddened, not by Microsoft success, I have no problem with their success, they’ve earned their success — for the most part. I have a problem with the fact that they just make really third-rate products.’

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upzKj-1HaKw

Burying the hatchet

‘If we want to move forward, see Apple healthy and prospering again, we have to let go a few things here. We have to let go of this notion that for Apple to win, Microsoft has to lose. We have to embrace the notion that for Apple to win, Apple has to do a really good job. […] So the era of setting this up as a competition between Apple and Microsoft is over as far as I’m concerned.’

Source: Best Steve Jobs Speeches

3 stories at the 2005 Stanford Commencement address

Today I want to tell you three stories from my life.
That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots. […]

‘I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. […]If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.’ […]

My second story is about love and loss. […]

‘We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. […] What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating. I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. […] But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over. I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.[…] I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. […] I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. […] Don’t settle.’

My third story is about death. […]

‘Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart. […] death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.
[…] Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.’

Source: Stanford speech transcript

Teamwork

I am not an Apple fan. I do not own any of their products and enjoy more the openess of other companies. However, I respect the care and the identity of the brand that were implemented throught the years.

There is a great article by Walter Isaacson on collaborative innovation in the digital era — an excerpt of his book. Mr. Jobs himself would have probably agreed that he was not a lone genius. I leave you with his view on having fantastic colleagues:

‘When you get really good people, they know they’re really good, and you don’t have to baby people’s egos so much. And what really matters is the work, and everybody knows that. So, people are being counted on to do specific pieces of the puzzle. And the most important thing you can do for someone who’s really good and really being counted on is to point out to them when their work isn’t good enough.’

Source: The 8 Greatest Quotes from Steve Jobs