I just finished “Steve Jobs” by Walter Isaacson. Here’s 20 things I highlighted. Some apply to preaching. Some apply to pastoring. Some are just interesting:
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.
2. Picasso had a saying – “Good artists copy, great artists steal” – we have been shameless about stealing great ideas.
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 assaholic. So I could recognize that in Steve.”
10. What prepared him for the success he would have in Act 3.
11. It takes a lot of hard work to make something simple.
12. You have to deeply understand the essence of a product in order to be able to get rid of the parts that are not essential.
13. Gretzky – “Skate where the puck is going, not where it has been.”
14. Jobs – “What are the 10 things we should be doing next?…We can only do 3″
15. The mark of an innovative company is not that it comes up with new ideas first, but also that it knows how to leapfrog when it finds itself behind.
16. Some people say, “Give the customers what they want.” but that’s not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they’re going to want before they do.
17. Henry Ford – “If I’d asked customers what the wanted, they’d have told me, ‘a faster horse’.”
18. People don’t know what they want until you show it to them. That’s why I never rely on market research. Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page.
19. You build a company that will stand for something a generation or two from now. That’s what Walt Disney did, and HP, and the people that built Intel. They created a company to last, not just to make money. That’s what I want Apple to be.
20. Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.
So, what about you?
What got your attention?
