Showing posts with label Steve Jobs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Steve Jobs. Show all posts
Sunday, December 7, 2014
Monday, April 9, 2012
Jobs' Genius: Profound Sense of Design & Getting Geniuses to Work Together and
Best-selling author Jonah Lehrer (Proust Was A Neuroscientist and How We Decide) found himself increasingly drawn to the mystery of creativity a few years ago. “We live in a world surrounded by our own inventions, and yet we really don’t understand how the imagination works,” he explains. “That’s why we’ve always outsourced it to the muses.” Lehrer, no stranger to creativity himself (a Rhodes scholar, he is a contributing editor at Wired and a frequent contributor to the New Yorker), set off on a mission to learn about the subject from scientists and talents alike, “to find connections between the well-controlled conditions in the lab and the real world.” The result is his fascinating new book, Imagine: How Creativity Works, which will be No. 1 on the New York Times nonfiction list on Sunday. TIME spoke with Lehrer about the genius of Bob Dylan, the creative benefits of urban friction and the wondrous invention of the Swiffer.
You cite Bob Dylan as an example of how frustration is critical component in creativity. Why?
I’m a long-time fan of Bob Dylan and have always been fascinated by the moment in 1965 when he comes back from his UK tour and he decides to quit singing and songwriting. He has already published some pretty epic albums…but he feels stuck. His crowd still wants him to be a folk artist. They won’t fully embrace his changes. And so he’s just so fed up with it. He’s so sick of being labeled that he decides to quit and go to upstate New York to be a novelist and a painter. It’s there in a remote rural cabin that he starts scribbling again after just two days — and those are the lyrics of “Like a Rolling Stone,” one of the most influential songs in the history of rock ‘n’ roll.
That’s surprising. It seems as though frustration would drain creativity, rather than build it.
I think most people assume that when you feel stumped, you should just give up, that that’s a sign the problem is just too hard for you. But it’s also a sign that your standard method of trying to solve the problem just isn’t working so it’s also a cut to your brain to really start searching for much more remote associations for far-fetched ideas, for real speculation. In order to benefit from that kind of thinking, it helps to get relaxed — to take a shower, go for a walk — so you can turn the spotlight inward and finally hear that quiet voice, which is trying to give you different insight.
You also write about the benefit of artistic constraints.
When you give people a constraint they think it’s just something to get in their way, something that makes creativity harder. But it actually compels you to think in more interesting, abstract ways. This explains why poets use poetic form. You know it would be so much easier if they all just wrote free-verse poetry. And yet they have always insisted on these elaborate schemes like the sonnet and haikus. I think that’s because they know that those constraints force them to think in very interesting ways to come up with really unlikely and original words. In a sense we can only break out of the box when we step into some shackles.
Steve Jobs is considered by many to be the epitome of creativity. How would you explain his abilities?
Steve Jobs was an amazing manager of creativity. He had a really profound sense of what a beautiful gadget should look like, what a beautiful computer should look like. He had some very interesting insights about how to get creative people from different domains to work together — how to get engineers to work with designers at Pixar, how to get computer scientists to work with animators, directors and screenwriters. He didn’t invent these products himself but he knew how to manage their development.
People think that genius or extreme creativity is a very solitary, individual undertaking, but you believe there’s something interactive about it.
Creativity is often associated with the singular, with a single person at his desk or talking a walk. It’s actually much more social. We often associate entrepreneurship with one person — it’s Steve Jobs, it’s Richard Branson, it’s Oprah Winfrey — when actually part of their creativity is who their friends are. The same is true for genius like William Shakespeare or Plato. They arrived in clusters; they weren’t alone. William Shakespeare lived in the same city at the same time with Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe and John Dunne. That’s not an accident.
Would a first cousin of this be what you call urban friction?
Yes, absolutely. I think the fact that Shakespeare lived in London, which was the densest city of the time and a very successful metropolis — that was not an accident. Cities really are an engine of innovation. They are where so many of our good ideas originate. Ten years ago and people were saying, now that we’ve got Skype, email and video chat cities will wither. Of course that hasn’t happened because cities are more valuable than ever before. Being around all these other smart people makes us smarter.
You write that there are people who find creativity in taking drugs. Can that really open up true creativity?
I think the reason creative people have this history of self-medicating is because creativity is so damned hard. It’s so hard writing that perfect poem, coming up with that next gadget, finding the next consumer product. That’s why they’re looking for any edge, any boost that they can find.
You also find creative excellence in product inventions like the Swiffer.
Anyone who has mopped the floor many times has been frustrated by mopping. When you’re mopping, you realize this probably isn’t the best way to do this, because you spend more time cleaning the mop than cleaning the actual floor. But it never occurred to me in all those years of mopping that there could be a better way. I simply marveled at the fact here are these guys spent nine months watching people mop and realized this isn’t a frustration we have to live with. It was you know a very audacious and interesting move on their part. I’m a fan of the Swiffer — I’ve got the whole family in my closet.
What can we do to be more creative — or is it outside our control?
I’m kind of a shy person, but now I’m much more willing to ask a question of the guy sitting next to me on the plane or train. I force myself to do this because of all the research on how diverse social networks make us more creative, how talking to lots of people leads to more new ideas. Friction making sparks — that is absolutely true. And when I feel stumped in my own work, I’m now much more willing to take a break, to go take a shower, to go for a hike. Einstein has that great line about creativity being the residue of time wasted. Well, now I’m much more willing to waste some time.
http://entertainment.time.com/2012/04/05/how-we-all-can-be-creative-types/?iid=ent-main-lede
Saturday, March 31, 2012
Saturday, October 29, 2011
9 things you didn’t know about the life of Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs leans against his wife, Laurene Powell Jobs (Lea Suzuki/San Francisco Chronicle/Corbis)
For all of his years in the spotlight at the helm of Apple, Steve Jobs in many ways remains an inscrutable figure — even in his death. Fiercely private, Jobs concealed most specifics about his personal life, from his curious family life to the details of his battle with pancreatic cancer — a disease that ultimately claimed him on Wednesday, at the age of 56.
While the CEO and co-founder of Apple steered most interviews away from the public fascination with his private life, there's plenty we know about Jobs the person, beyond the Mac and the iPhone. If anything, the obscure details of his interior life paint a subtler, more nuanced portrait of how one of the finest technology minds of our time grew into the dynamo that we remember him as today.
1. Early life and childhood
Jobs was born in San Francisco on February 24, 1955. He was adopted shortly after his birth and reared near Mountain View, California by a couple named Clara and Paul Jobs. His adoptive father — a term that Jobs openly objected to — was a machinist for a laser company and his mother worked as an accountant.
Jobs was born in San Francisco on February 24, 1955. He was adopted shortly after his birth and reared near Mountain View, California by a couple named Clara and Paul Jobs. His adoptive father — a term that Jobs openly objected to — was a machinist for a laser company and his mother worked as an accountant.
Later in life, Jobs discovered the identities of his estranged parents. His birth mother, Joanne Simpson, was a graduate student at the time and later a speech pathologist; his biological father, Abdulfattah John Jandali, was a Syrian Muslim who left the country at age 18 and reportedly now serves as the vice president of a Reno, Nevada casino. While Jobs reconnected with Simpson in later years, he and his biological father remained estranged.
Reed College
The lead mind behind the most successful company on the planet never graduated from college, in fact, he didn't even get close. After graduating from high school in Cupertino, California — a town now synonymous with 1 Infinite Loop, Apple's headquarters — Jobs enrolled in Reed College in 1972. Jobs stayed at Reed (a liberal arts university in Portland, Oregon) for only one semester, dropping out quickly due to the financial burden the private school's steep tuition placed on his parents.
In his famous 2005 commencement speech to Stanford University, Jobs said of his time at Reed: "It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5 cent deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the seven miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple."
Breakout for the Atari
Jobs is well known for his innovations in personal computing, mobile tech, and software, but he also helped create one of the best known video games of all-time. In 1975, Jobs was tapped by Atarito work on the Pong-like game Breakout.
He was reportedly offered $750 for his development work, with the possibility of an extra $100 for each chip eliminated from the game's final design. Jobs recruited Steve Wozniak (later one of Apple's other founders) to help him with the challenge. Wozniak managed to whittle the prototype's design down so much that Atari paid out a $5,000 bonus — but Jobs kept the bonus for himself, and paid his unsuspecting friend only $375, according to Wozniak's own autobiography.
4. The wife he leaves behind
Like the rest of his family life, Jobs kept his marriage out of the public eye. Thinking back on his legacy conjures images of him commanding the stage in his trademark black turtleneck and jeans, and those solo moments are his most iconic. But at home in Palo Alto, Jobs was raising a family with his wife, Laurene, an entrepreneur who attended the University of Pennsylvania's prestigious Wharton business school and later received her MBA at Stanford, where she first met her future husband.
Like the rest of his family life, Jobs kept his marriage out of the public eye. Thinking back on his legacy conjures images of him commanding the stage in his trademark black turtleneck and jeans, and those solo moments are his most iconic. But at home in Palo Alto, Jobs was raising a family with his wife, Laurene, an entrepreneur who attended the University of Pennsylvania's prestigious Wharton business school and later received her MBA at Stanford, where she first met her future husband.
For all of his single-minded dedication to the company he built from the ground up, Jobs actuallyskipped a meeting to take Laurene on their first date: "I was in the parking lot with the key in the car, and I thought to myself, 'If this is my last night on earth, would I rather spend it at a business meeting or with this woman?' I ran across the parking lot, asked her if she'd have dinner with me. She said yes, we walked into town and we've been together ever since."
In 1991, Jobs and Powell were married in the Ahwahnee Hotel at Yosemite National Park, and the marriage was officiated by Kobin Chino, a Zen Buddhist monk.
5. His sister is a famous author
Later in his life, Jobs crossed paths with his biological sister while seeking the identity of his birth parents. His sister, Mona Simpson (born Mona Jandali), is the well-known author of Anywhere But Here — a story about a mother and daughter that was later adapted into a film starring Natalie Portman and Susan Sarandon.
Later in his life, Jobs crossed paths with his biological sister while seeking the identity of his birth parents. His sister, Mona Simpson (born Mona Jandali), is the well-known author of Anywhere But Here — a story about a mother and daughter that was later adapted into a film starring Natalie Portman and Susan Sarandon.
After reuniting, Jobs and Simpson developed a close relationship. Of his sister, he told a New York Times interviewer: "We're family. She's one of my best friends in the world. I call her and talk to her every couple of days.'' Anywhere But Here is dedicated to "my brother Steve."
Joan Baez
In The Second Coming of Steve Jobs, an unauthorized biography, a friend from Reed reveals that Jobs had a brief fling with folk singer Joan Baez. Baez confirmed the the two were close "briefly," though her romantic connection with Bob Dylan is much better known (Dylan was the Apple icon's favorite musician). The biography also notes that Jobs went out with actress Diane Keaton briefly.
7. His first daughter
When he was 23, Jobs and his high school girlfriend Chris Ann Brennan conceived a daughter, Lisa Brennan Jobs. She was born in 1978, just as Apple began picking up steam in the tech world. He and Brennan never married, and Jobs reportedly denied paternity for some time, going as far as stating that he was sterile in court documents. He went on to father three more children with Laurene Powell. After later mending their relationship, Jobs paid for his first daughter's education at Harvard. She graduated in 2000 and now works as a magazine writer.
When he was 23, Jobs and his high school girlfriend Chris Ann Brennan conceived a daughter, Lisa Brennan Jobs. She was born in 1978, just as Apple began picking up steam in the tech world. He and Brennan never married, and Jobs reportedly denied paternity for some time, going as far as stating that he was sterile in court documents. He went on to father three more children with Laurene Powell. After later mending their relationship, Jobs paid for his first daughter's education at Harvard. She graduated in 2000 and now works as a magazine writer.
8. Alternative lifestyle
In a few interviews, Jobs hinted at his early experience with the psychedelic drug LSD. Of Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Jobs said: "I wish him the best, I really do. I just think he and Microsoft are a bit narrow. He'd be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger."
In a few interviews, Jobs hinted at his early experience with the psychedelic drug LSD. Of Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Jobs said: "I wish him the best, I really do. I just think he and Microsoft are a bit narrow. He'd be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger."
The connection has enough weight that Albert Hofmann, the Swiss scientist who first synthesized (and took) LSD, appealed to Jobs for funding for research about the drug's therapeutic use.
In a book interview, Jobs called his experience with the drug "one of the two or three most important things I have done in my life." As Jobs himself has suggested, LSD may have contributed to the "think different" approach that still puts Apple's designs a head above the competition.
Jobs will forever be a visionary, and his personal life also reflects the forward-thinking, alternative approach that vaulted Apple to success. During a trip to India, Jobs visited a well-known ashram and returned to the U.S. as a Zen Buddhist.
Jobs was also a pescetarian who didn't consume most animal products, and didn't eat meat other than fish. A strong believer in Eastern medicine, he sought to treat his own cancer through alternative approaches and specialized diets before reluctantly seeking his first surgery for a cancerous tumor in 2004.
9. His fortune
As the CEO of the world's most valuable brand, Jobs pulled in a comically low annual salary of just $1. While the gesture isn't unheard of in the corporate world — Google's Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt all pocketed the same 100 penny salary annually — Jobs has kept his salary at $1 since 1997, the year he became Apple's lead executive. Of his salary, Jobs joked in 2007: "I get 50 cents a year for showing up, and the other 50 cents is based on my performance."
As the CEO of the world's most valuable brand, Jobs pulled in a comically low annual salary of just $1. While the gesture isn't unheard of in the corporate world — Google's Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt all pocketed the same 100 penny salary annually — Jobs has kept his salary at $1 since 1997, the year he became Apple's lead executive. Of his salary, Jobs joked in 2007: "I get 50 cents a year for showing up, and the other 50 cents is based on my performance."
In early 2011, Jobs owned 5.5 million shares of Apple. After his death, Apple shares were valued at $377.64 — a roughly 43-fold growth in valuation over the last 10 years that shows no signs of slowing down.
He may only have taken in a single dollar per year, but Jobs leaves behind a vast fortune. The largest chunk of that wealth is the roughly $7 billion from the sale of Pixar to Disney in 2006. In 2011, with an estimated net worth of $8.3 billion, he was the 110th richest person in the world, according toForbes. If Jobs hadn't sold his shares upon leaving Apple in 1985 (before returning to the company in 1996), he would be the world's fifth richest individual.
While there's no word yet on plans for his estate, Jobs leaves behind three children from his marriage to Laurene Jobs (Reed, Erin, and Eve), as well as his first daughter, Lisa Brennan-Jobs.
[Image credit: Ben Stanfield, Heinrich Klaffs]
This article originally appeared on Tecca
More from Tecca:
Friday, October 14, 2011
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Steve Jobs: The Greatest Second and Third Acts in Business History
Earlier this evening, Steve Jobs stunned us all with the news that he isresigning from his position as CEO of Apple, Inc. Jobs took a medical leave of absence in January — his second since 2009. He will remain as Chairman and will be succeeded as CEO by Tim Cook.Steve Jobs’ stellar career is already the stuff of legend. He co-founded Apple Computer with Steve Wozniak in 1976. In 1977, the company’s first mass-market product, the Apple II, helped ignite the personal computing revolution. When IBM released its PC in 1981, it was largely in response to the Apple II.
In 1984, Jobs unveiled the Macintosh. Announced with the most famous Super Bowl ad of all-time, the first Mac introduced a mainstream audience to user-interface concepts — pointing and clicking on a desktop — that are still in use today.
Despite its polish and appearance, the Macintosh was not able to match the commercial success of IBM’s PC (and other PC compatible systems) — or even match the sales of the Apple II.
The NeXT Chapter
Disagreements over the vision and style of Apple forced Jobs out in 1985. After resigning from the company he founded, Jobs went on to start NeXT, a company that aimed to bring his vision of personal computing and programming to educators, engineers and designers.
NeXT wasn’t the success that Jobs hoped that it would be. It didn’t fulfill on its promise to change the computing industry — at least, not at first. But Mac OS X is a direct descendant of NeXTSTEP, the operating system developed by Jobs’ team at NeXT. Objective-C, the programming language that is still used in Mac OS X and in iOS, was developed at NeXT.
It’s easy to think NeXT’s track record was unsuccessful. But the technology products that have made Apple not just a successful company, but the most valuable company in the world, are direct descendants of work done at NeXT. iOS simply wouldn’t be iOS without the work that Jobs fostered at his second company.
And by buying NeXT, as Apple did in 1997, it was buying back Steve Jobs himself — who soon ousted the hapless Gil Amelio as CEO.
Pixar and the Future of Animation
Of course, Jobs’ business legacy is about more than just Apple. In 1986, Jobs acquired a small animation studio called Pixar. It would be Pixar, not Apple, that would bring Jobs major success in the 1990s.
After years of toiling away in obscurity, Pixar hit the big time in 1995 with Toy Story, the first completely computer animated full-length motion picture. In 2006, Jobs sold Pixar to the Walt Disney Company for more than $7 billion. Jobs became a member of Disney’s Board of Directors — and the company’s largest shareholder.
While the success of Pixar should be largely attributed to director John Lasseter, the decision to acquire the company and invest in its technology in 1986 is a great example of Jobs’ vision and understanding of the future.
A Second and Third Act of Success
Since returning to Apple in 1997, Jobs has lead his company through the most phenomenal turn-around story in business history. Since taking over as CEO in 1997 — initially, he said, for an interim period — Apple’s stock has increased nearly a hundredfold.
1998′s introduction of the iMac and the 2001 introduction of the iPod led many to call Apple’s early 2000s renaissance the “most successful second act in business history.” But it has been in the last four years — since the introduction of the iPhone — that Apple has utterly dominated. Earlier this month, Apple overtookExxon as the most valuable company.
It’s not just marketing rhetoric to say that the iPhone, and now the iPad, has changed everything. As we noted in June, “every major smartphone that has gone into production since the iPhone’s release has, in some way, been a response to the iPhone itself.”
This is even more true of tablet computing. From Samsung to HP, Acer to Asus, the tablets that currently exist in the marketplace are direct responses to the iPad. HP’s TouchPad was perhaps the most direct descendent — with everything from its form factor and scree resolution mimicking the iPad. We all know how that story has ended.
An Unknown Future
Steve Jobs leaves the company he co-founded in tremendous shape. With tens of billions of cash on hand, products that sell out as fast as they can be produced, and an ecosystem that continues to expand, the company’s future footing is solid.
Moreover, one needs look no further than Disney to see that it is possible for corporations to continue to succeed, even without their visionary founder at the helm.
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