Greg Surratt wrote a blog on Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs. It contains some of the best insights from the book.
1. Apple had a 3rd partner, Ron Wayne, who got cold feet after 11 days. He was paid a buyout of $2,300. Had he stayed, his share would be worth $2.6 billion. Ouch! That sounds like some real estate transactions I have made. My motto is buy high, sell low.
2. Picasso had a saying – “Good artists copy, great artists steal” At Crossroads we have been shameless about stealing great ideas. We are early adopters more than inventers.
3. In the annals of innovation, new ideas are only part of the equation. Execution is just as important.
4. The empowering force of naïveté – “Because I didn’t know it couldn’t be done, I was enabled to do it. ”
5. The goal was never to beat the competition, or to make a lot of money. It was to do the greatest thing possible, or even a little greater.
6. Jobs recruiting Pepsi’s Scully – Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water, or do you want a chance to change the world?
7. Jobs responding to a question about how he did market research for the Mac – “Did Alexander Graham Bell do any market research before he invented the telephone?”
8. The best & most innovative products don’t always win.
9. A colleague on how he dealt with Jobs abrasive personality “I used to be an angry man myself. I’m a recovering #@&. So I could recognize that in Steve.”
10. What prepared him for the success he would have in Act 3 was not his ouster from Act 1 @ Apple, but his brilliant failures in Act 2.
Proverbs 4:6 (God’s Word Translation) “Do not abandon wisdom, and it will watch over you. Love wisdom, and it will protect you.”
Glen Schneiders
