The Mind Of Steve Jobs | Artist & Dreamer

Written & Directed By Jonathan S. Chu

Chapter One: Legacy Of The Dreamer

Even years after his passing, Steve Jobs continues to fascinate the world.

He very much lived by his own advice, always holding a deep belief in his ability to influence the world around him, which led him to actually go on to revolutionize human society multiple times during the course of his lifetime, spearheading the personal computer revolution, establishing computer animation as respected art form via Pixar, transforming the music industry via the iPod and iTunes, and then ushering in the worldwide mobile wave.

His legacy remains a continual source of inspiration for countless young entrepreneurs in every nation across the globe, and even many the current rock star entrepreneurs on the world stage today, including Michael Saylor and Elon Musk.

What was it about him that draws such intense perpetual interest from people from the world over, people from vastly different walks of life and cultures?

Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak co-founded Apple Computer in 1977, and today it is one of the most valuable companies on earth.

It was their unique synergy that birthed a company that would go on to change the world and our very society many times over.

Steve Wozniak is a technical genius whose contributions are frequently overlooked, and were absolutely essential to Apple's success during the first decade, and he is credited as being the engineering mind behind the highly successful Apple 1 and Apple 2. Furthermore, today, he is as much respected for his philanthropy and big heart, as he is for his technical brilliance.

Steve Jobs did not have the same level of engineering or technical knowledge as Wozniak. Yet he was absolutely critical for Apple's initial success and especially during its later renaissance, in a much different way. Most of the world remembers him as the master businessman and marketer behind Apple, but he was more than that. He was the artist and dreamer behind Apple.

A number of documentaries and movies have been made about the tumultuous life of Steve Jobs, and he of course has his critics and detractors who focus on his less flattering character traits, especially the ones he was known for during his early years.

But I want to focus on something else entirely.

I want to focus on his tremendously unique and brilliant mind, exploring the nature of his genius, and what we all can learn from his methods of thinking, whether you are an entrepreneur, artist, or businessperson yourself, or just someone who is fascinated by his legacy and the apple brand.

Steve Jobs epitomized his famous “think different” slogan in every way.

He led a computer and technology company, and yet he was a man who was far more focused on design, aesthetics, and user experience, rather than on hardware and specs.

He was a college dropout who never finished his degree, and yet he was one of the savviest businessmen of modern history, and managed his company far differently and more effectively than those with MBAs from prestigious universities.

He designed the most incredible products that changed the very fabric of modern society, yet he never asked customers for what they wanted...he somehow knew what people wanted.

He was tremendously intelligent, yet he was not a nerd like Bill Gates.

He had a high capacity for logic, yet he relied predominantly upon his intuition.

In the next chapters, let’s delve further into all of the unique aspects of his genius, and discover what we can all learn from his ways of thinking.

Chapter Two: Courage, Passion, and Connecting the Dots

Though many skeptics of the world frequently scoff at the mindset of “doing what you love,” and “following your passion,” it was certainly a sentiment that Steve Jobs deeply believed in and personally followed, and it helped make him one of the most successful entrepreneurs in history.

One of the most fascinating aspects of Jobs is that money was never his primary motivator. He did it because he had an immense passion for the products he was creating.

In fact, in many ways, he actually viewed himself as a rebel artist, and as a young man was very much wary of massive bureaucratic corporations like IBM.

As his biographer, Walter Isaacson, put it:

“Throughout his career, Jobs liked to see himself as an enlightened rebel pitted against evil empires, a Jedi warrior or Buddhist samurai fighting the forces of darkness. IBM was his perfect foil.”

Ironically, this mindset actually led him to much greater financial success than the multitudes of businessmen who focus solely on the balance sheet, and his own unique value system actually led him to build the most valuable company in the world.

When you love what you do, that passion tends to permeate into every aspect of your work, which sets it far and above the competition, especially if your competitors are just going through the motions and doing it for monetary rewards, rather than fulfilling a higher purpose.

When studying the products that Steve jobs was involved in developing, one can instantly sense that there is more to the product than just excellent design, and one can almost feel the immense care, attention to detail, and thought that went into each product, even the parts that most people will never see.

As Jobs said, in his own words, during his final years:

“My passion has been to build an enduring company where people were motivated to make great products. Everything else was secondary. Sure, it was great to make a profit, because that was what allowed you to make great products. But the products, not the profits, were the motivation.”

Many silicon valley startups today have an entirely different mentality, and view their companies as a quick way to secure funding from venture capitalists, creating a vehicle they hope to cash out of in a few years.

Jobs’ approach was absolutely antithetical to this.

He had overwhelming love for both Apple and Pixar, and this passionate energy is what blossomed them into two of the most revered brands on Earth. These were the opposite of short-term vehicles created solely for money, they were lifelong passion projects, and he put in every effort to ensure that they would have enduring legacies that far outlived him.

Of course, in the game of life, following the passion in your heart is something far easier said than done. We live in a society that is, on the whole, practical and profit driven rather than romantic and idealistic.

Thus, following your heart in our modern world is not nearly as easy as it sounds. It actually takes immense courage and faith, and luckily for jobs, they were both qualities that he had in spades.

Most of the major life decisions that jobs made by following his heart were unconventional to say the least, and I'm certain that most of his peers found many of them to be outright bizarre by ordinary standards.

Traveling to India for more than 7 months is something that most people will never even consider, yet it helped Jobs cultivate a lifelong passion for eastern spirituality, a philosophy that has influenced all of his apple products ever since.

As he stated in his speech, he dropped out of college during his freshman year, yet stayed on campus to drop in on random classes that he found interesting for eighteen months afterwards. I’m sure many of his peers thought that he was out of his mind. Yet, the things he learned from following his own interests benefited Apple in many unexpected ways down the line, the beautiful Macintosh typefaces of course being one great example.

While today, everyone of course celebrates the founding of Apple as the quintessential entrepreneurial success story - the trillion dollar company started by two idealistic kids working out of a garage; however it must be kept in mind that no one thought so at the time. Computers were hulking mainframes meant only for large companies, and the idea that every household would own a computer seemed preposterous to at the time, even to so called business experts and professional investors. Yet both Jobs and Wozniak had a deep passion for personal computers and had a vision of their future potential, and by bravely following this passion, embracing the risks, ignoring the naysayers, uncertain of where it would eventually lead, these two young men went on to eventually change our entire society.

Yet another example was when he bought and nurtured Pixar animation studios. For an entire decade, He continued to pour millions of dollars of his own money into the company as it was continually losing money, year after year, even when many of the famous business people around him saw zero value in this new art form and called it a passing fad, a gimmick. Yet in spite of this, jobs persevered, because he sincerely believed in the potential of computer animation to become a great art form.

Following your heart is an oft repeated and pleasant sounding platitude, yet it is usually immensely difficult to actually put in practice. This is because the callings of your heart will likely lead you far away from the masses, and hence, you will often face a great deal of judgement, perhaps even ostracization, and you will have to face your own personal doubts as well.

Perhaps in your own life, you don't want to start a computer company or animation studio like jobs did, but perhaps you want to start a business in the area of your own passion, such as a restaurant or consulting firm, or perhaps you want to study to become a physician when no one else in your family has gone on to higher education. It's certainly not an easy road, and you may face a lot of resistance and naysaying from those around you.

But, as in the example of Steve Jobs life, it is absolutely worth it to muster the courage and strength to be true to your heart, because doing so is how you become the person you were always meant to be. Very likely, you will not understand the big picture until you look backwards many years from now, as the heart can have wisdom that transcends the logical mind.

Chapter Three: Intuition And Spirituality

It is widely known that Jobs was deeply spiritual, and that Eastern Philosophy and Spirituality were immensely important to him. His passion in this area is what led him to undertake his spiritual journey in India as a young man. However, his fascination with Eastern Spirituality continued for the remainder of his life, and his favorite book was the Autobiography Of A Yogi, which he read at least once per year and was loaded onto his personal iPad, and he and his wife were even married by a Zen Buddhist monk.

Though his lifelong dedication to studying Zen Buddhism did little to lessen his famous temper and brash attitude, his studies did provide him with the exceptional ability to focus that was peerless even in the highest levels of the business world.

In the highly digitized modern world, we often face a lot of pressure to take on a great number of responsibilities and engage in endless multitasking. In fact, in modern culture, more is often seen as better.

However, Jobs understood that in many cases, greatness is achieved by saying no and ridding yourself of the unessential.

An excellent example of this was when Steve Jobs returned to Apple when it was on the brink of bankruptcy, and began the herculean task of revitalizing and restoring the deeply troubled company.

Apple at that time had an endless array of products, most of which were mediocre.

Jobs eliminated all of them, and pared the entire corporation’s offerings down to a highly simplified grid of only four products.

Even today, Tim Cook remains very much aware of the power of a simple and focused product line after years of mentorship from jobs. Apple’s product line now includes a few more major categories, like air pods and the apple watch. However, the legacy of Steve Jobs lives on, in that the largest corporation on earth offers fewer than ten major product categories, and strives to do each one very well, rather than offering a huge array of average products.

Also, on the topic of spirituality, Steve Jobs was also famous for employing a “reality distortion field” throughout his life.

To explain this simply, many of his colleagues throughout the years have described how through a combination of charisma and force of will, jobs could often bend the reality around him, compelling his teammates to accomplish tasks they previously thought impossible, or effectively sell a lofty vision that would have seemed hopelessly ambitious and naive if presented by anyone else.

Though it may be too nebulous for some, I believe that there was a highly spiritual aspect of this reality distortion field. Many Eastern Spiritual traditions embrace the idea that thoughts, willpower, and mentative energy exert influence on the external world, and it is well known that jobs had a lifelong fascination with these disciplines. Many modern gurus teach these ancient principles under popular names such as the law of attraction and the law of vibration. Jobs understood these ideas long before they were part of popular culture, and it can be argued that he utilized the power of his mind and will to help him build many of his endeavors.

Of course, there were definite limits to this ability. As Walter Isaacson said, while most people would be helplessly enthralled by jobs reality distortion field, there were also men like bill gates who were completely immune to it. Furthermore, in spite of his almost superhuman force of will, a number of his projects failed to reach fruition or the level of success he hoped. However, when one studies his life and sees the multitude of incredible achievements he contributed to the world, coupled with his lifelong study of spirituality, one cannot help but think that his spiritual knowledge and abilities contributed, at least in some degree, to the manifestation of his accomplishments.

Furthermore, though Steve Jobs had a strong understanding of the logical mechanics behind running a company, he often relied far more on his intuition to make major decisions.

Though many of the pragmatists of the world dismiss intuition as merely fanciful and whimsical and too fleeting to rely on, it is fascinating how many other great minds also highly valued the power of intuition.

As Einstein stated:

“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant.”

As Steve Jobs told Walter Isaacson:

“Intuition is a very powerful thing, more powerful than intellect, in my opinion. That’s had a big impact on my work.”

But what exactly is intuition?

There are varying definitions depending on the discipline of study, but in general, it can be thought of as an instinctual, gut-level understanding of something that occurs without multiple steps of logical thinking. In the discipline of Zen Buddhism, intuition is considered a faculty of the mind that is beyond conscious thought, and they have certain techniques that allow one to train this ability.

Intuition can be a concept that is difficult to grasp, as it is both a subconscious and superconscious mode of thinking that transcends the conscious mind, and is a kind of spiritual knowledge. However, if you think back on your own life, you can think of situations that just felt right on a very subtle, instinctual level, and you couldn't exactly describe why, and later turned out to be the correct decision.

Developing and trusting his intuition allowed jobs to make faster and better decisions than his competitors. While developing products, he would often ask for multiple models of an upcoming product, and he made his decisions based on how he felt while holding, touching, and experiencing them, rather than on lengthy customer studies and the like. While relying so heavily on intuition goes against most conventional business wisdom, and while not all of his business decisions were slam dunks, on the whole, his decision-making ability was truly exceptional, especially when he had matured as an executive. While much of the business world today is just starting to recognize the value of intuitive knowledge, Steve Jobs was very much ahead of his time in this regard, and in many ways it was his intuition that guided Apple into becoming such an elegant brand.

Chapter Four: Failure, Tenacity, and the Art of the Comeback

When most people think of Steve Jobs today, his paradigm-changing successes are usually the first to come to mind.

But it is easy to forget that he experienced multiple devastating failures and challenges during his life, both personal and professional.

Though he co-founded an industry changing corporation at a young age, becoming a world-famous entrepreneur in only his twenties, he also faced many major setbacks from a young age as well.

Though the Apple1 and 2 were huge successes, his project, the LISA, was a commercial failure. Furthermore, though the original macintosh was undeniably great work of innovation and propelled the industry forward, it was not as profitable as Apple had hoped.

Then of course, he was fired from the very company he founded, and for a time he was actually considered to be a laughing stock in silicon valley.

He went on to found next, which produced some important technological innovations and software that were far ahead of their time, but failed to be a significant commercial success.

However, when one zooms out and takes a broader view of his life as a whole, his failures were not a negative, but in the long term became powerful learning experiences, and helped him to become the celebrated and respected CEO he was destined to become.

Jobs was always a visionary. However, in his early years, he was unable to make full and effective use of his genius, due to his highly mercurial nature and inexperience. It was only after a series of failures, that his genius was tempered by wisdom and discipline, allowing him to lead Apple to becoming one of the most valuable companies in the world.

After listening to all of his interviews and speeches to research this film, one can really sense the brilliance and foresight he had, even as a young man in his twenties and thirties. However, there is something even far more impressive about hearing him speak as an older man. He has a much greater sense of gravitas, broad-mindedness, wisdom, and even a degree of humility.

Our current educational system is very much adverse to mistakes and failures. In fact, society as a whole views failure as a very negative thing. As a result, most people play it safe all of their lives and are terrified of making mistakes. But as Steve Jobs said, this leads to a very limited life.

Though Steve Jobs is celebrated for his many incredible successes, after studying his life, I believe that his ability to learn from his failures was one of his greatest and overlooked strengths, and actually led to his later maturity as a leader, and hence the blockbuster products he created in the second half of his life.

It takes incredible tenacity to overcome serious failures in life, and most people in the world never dare to try again after a major setback.

But Steve Jobs was incredibly tough, and kept on marching forward, even after he was fired from Apple, after the public failures of several major products, after Pixar failed to produce significant profits in its first ten years, and after his cancer diagnosis.

Furthermore, it takes a great degree of introspective ability and humility to learn from failures, and again, most people lack the insight into themselves and also are unable to set aside their pride. Though Steve Jobs is often known for his larger than life ego, I think that one his most overlooked and underrated traits was his ability to temporarily set aside that ego and learn from each of the big setbacks during his life, each time becoming a better entrepreneur, and also a better man.

Hence, from the life of Steve Jobs, we can all learn that mistakes and failures are not to be feared, but to be embraced as critical learning experiences. I don’t care who you are or what your background is, every human being on Earth will face failures during their lifetimes.

The important question is: how do you deal with those failures?

If we are able to draw the appropriate lessons from the mistakes in life, they could lead us to our greatest successes and allow us to become the leaders of the future.

Chapter Five: Design and User Experience

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

-Early Apple Brochure

One of the many things that made Steve Jobs very different from other tech industry titans such as Bill Gates, is that Jobs was not focused primarily on hardware and specs and the utilitarian aspects of computing.

Instead, Jobs was very much focused on the actual experience of the computer users.

For example, while working on the original Macintosh, Jobs was obsessed with making the graphical interface a pleasant, fun, and easy experience.

Some of the Macintosh team members were incredulous about why he pushed them so hard to build certain features, such as smooth scrolling and windows that could stack on top of each other like virtual papers on a desktop, as well as a ball mouse that could move the cursor in all directions, rather than just 4 directions.

These features were tremendously difficult to execute during that time period, yet now the intuitive desktop analogy has become such an essential aspect of personal computing that we completely take them for granted, and don’t even give it a second thought.

For Jobs, the computer was not just an expensive box that sat on your desk, and a mobile phone was so much more than just a cumbersome communication device.

What does it feel like to use?

Is it easy and intuitive and fun?

Is the device and the operating system pleasing to the eye?

Furthermore, whether it was during the early days working on the original Macintosh, or towards the end of his life working on the iPad, he was absolutely obsessed with controlling the entire end to end experience for the customer.

This always meant closely integrating hardware and software so that both could work better and create an effortless user experience. It also meant seamless integration between products, such as when jobs insisted on ensuring flawless communication between the iPod and Macbooks via iTunes software.

Furthermore, his artistic eye even applied to things that most people overlook, such as the packaging and the look of the app icons. When opening a new apple product, jobs wanted the unboxing to be a special visual and tactile experience, to create the sense that there was a jewel of a product inside, whether it be an iPod or iPhone or computer.

And perhaps in an even greater sense, Steve Jobs wanted to go as far as making products that inspired their users.

And going further along this concept of great user experience, he also was always focused on making his products beautiful and elegant.

Jobs himself was a fan of great art in its many forms, and learned much from them. For example, he loved the classical music of composers like Bach, but also the best of classic rock, including such as Bob Dylan, the Rolling stones, and Joan Baez. He also drew immense inspiration from beautiful products that came before him, such as Porsche cars and classic Mercedes cars, BMW motorcycles, Bosendorfer pianos, Bang and Olufsen audio equipment, and retro Braun electronics.

He was so involved with aesthetics that his design tastes heavily influenced even the actual predominant shapes of Apple products. Since the Macintosh days, his favorite shape has always been a rounded rectangle, as he always found the shape to be very aesthetically pleasing to the eye. Take a step back and take a look over the entire Apple product line, and you realize just how ubiquitous rounded rectangles are within the Apple product line, from the iPod, to the iPhone, to the MacBook, and of course, even the app icons themselves.

Furthermore, it’s important to also note that the overall aesthetic of the main Apple products has evolved very little since Steve Jobs passed away, and yet the current Apple product line still looks very modern, and I think this is very much a testament to how ahead of his time Jobs was in terms of design.

Of course, this approach was applied not only to the MacBooks and iPod, but also to the retail store itself.

Though the Apple store now has many imitators, such as Sony, Samsung, and even Tesla, it is important to keep in mind that it was a revolutionary concept and design at the time of it’s introduction, and Steve jobs oversaw every aspect of it.

The same philosophy that went into the design of the products went into the design of the store. When the first apple store opened, in many ways it felt more like an art gallery than a retail store, and the unique experience of walking through it and interacting with the products was quite revolutionary at that time. Though many critics at the time told him that retail stores for computers had all failed in the past, he pushed forward, undeterred. Together with a personally selected designer by the name of Art Gensler, Jobs labored tirelessly over the look of the stores, and obsessing over every detail, including the signature glass staircases, the maple wood display benches, as well as the Pietra Serena sandstone flooring, which can only be sourced from one family-owned quarry in Italy.

As stated earlier, Steve Jobs had a lifelong fascination with eastern spirituality, especially Zen Buddhism, and in a broader sense, it can be said that Jobs wanted to align everything that apple produced with the higher spiritual values of Zen.

For Jobs, it was unacceptable to just produce utilitarian blocks with tangles of cables. Apple products had to align with the spiritual values he cherished, and this included simplicity, elegance, aesthetics, and a seamless, intuitive experience.

Though this spiritual perspective may be too abstract for many businesspeople to relate with, I truly believe that much of the apple’s success under Jobs was due to him aiming towards higher, transcendent qualities and values, while his competitors were stuck on merely the pragmatic. While his competitors were focused on their pricing and how fast their computers were, Jobs wanted his products to be much more. He didn’t want Apple to be another generic corporate behemoth, he wanted Apple to “Think Different” and to be different, to embody the values most important to him.

Is it beautiful?

Is it a pleasure to use?

And of course, his even loftier and ambitious overarching goal was this: does it help make people more creative?

I think this is a major reason why Apple has so many die-hard fans compared to other brands, and I think that much of Apple’s future success depends on whether it can remain true to these higher values as it moves into the future.

Chapter Six: A “Think Different” Approach To Leadership

Though his collaborators and teammates are not nearly as famous as he is, Steve Jobs has never been the only brilliant mind or “idea guy” at Apple and Pixar.

This is another facet of what made him a remarkable entrepreneur: he was a highly effective and unconventional leader, who knew how to build world-class teams, and then coordinate those teams to create something far greater than the sum of their parts.

In many bureaucratic large organizations, the leadership can often be insecure and feel threatened by smart people who question and challenge the norms. Thus, true meritocracies are actually quite rare in the modern corporate world, and advancement often favors politics over ability.

Jobs did not have this problem and took a radically different approach. He actually only wanted the very best and most brilliant people around him at all times. In his words, he wanted to surround himself with only A players, and no one else.

And though he is famous for being brash, abrasive, and brutally honest towards his colleagues, he never wanted it to be a one way street, and specifically sought out people who were smart enough and strong enough to challenge him back on a daily basis.

This created an environment that was certainly not for the faint of heart, yet this environment allowed the most talented people to come together, propose forward-thinking and sometimes even radical ideas, openly debate the merits of these ideas, and then allow the best ideas to win out.

Though he is certainly not known to be a humble person, jobs had a surprising amount of humility when it came to great ideas. As soon as one of his team members proposed an excellent idea, even if it was very different from his own, Jobs would immediately abandon his own idea and embrace the superior idea.

Furthermore, he was also able to see the larger picture, and hence able to integrate and coordinate the great ideas from his various teams. For example, with the iPod, chief apple engineer Jon Rubinstein came across a small hard drive that was still a prototype in development at Toshiba, and he had the idea of using it in a new type of music player, and Jobs was able to effectively combine this idea with the aesthetic designs and form factor developed by Jony Ive.

This is a big reason why Apple was able to outmaneuver and outcompete Sony. While companies like Sony were separated into large divisions that were siloed off and rarely communicated with each other, and sometimes even competed with each other, Jobs viewed Apple as one unified organism.

He met daily with the heads of the various departments and pushed them to constantly collaborate. During Apple's renaissance, the company was very much unified into a single front, with Jobs, of course, at the head of it, pushing a unified vision of where the company was going.

Of course, he did much the same with Pixar, and even designed the main building to have a giant atrium, which he felt would encourage unplanned collaboration between the various departments, and it worked quite beautifully.

So it's very clear that one of the reasons for Apple and pixars success is that Jobs had the uncanny ability to assemble teams packed with brilliant people at both companies.

But how was he able to recruit these people? Especially since Jobs had a famous reputation for being impetuous, brazen, and very difficult to get along with?

It is because though Jobs could be difficult to work with, he also created an environment where people could do their best work. It was an environment where innovative and unconventional ideas were not stifled. It was an environment where the people got to work on cutting edge products, and people were actually expected to challenge the status quo. Thus, it was a place where the best people could learn, improve, and cultivate their talents. This is actually what drew tim cook away from his much safer job at compaq to come work under steve jobs as chief operating officer.

Lastly, it is also very important to note that Steve Jobs was an incredibly decisive leader.

In most modern, large organizations, big decisions require months upon months of endless committee meetings, and the end result is often a hodgepodge mediocre solution produced by groupthink.

Steve Jobs, on the other hand, was known for incredible speed of decision making and implementation.

Furthermore, his decisions were never timid or half-hearted. They were bold and often involved embracing calculated risks.

He did not rely on endless rounds of focus groups and committees to make major decisions for apple. Instead, he relied upon his experience and carefully honed intuition to make his decisions, and then acted upon them immediately.

For example, shortly after the release of the iMac, one of his designers proposed the idea of releasing them in various colors. Most other companies would have done months of customer surveys and held numerous meetings about the demand for new colors and feasibility of such an action. However, as soon as Steve Jobs heard the idea, he loved it, and rapidly set out to manufacture them.

Another example is the iconic color of the iPod. The chief design officer of apple at the time, jony ive, proposed a radical idea: he wanted the ipod and headphones to be all white. This was unheard of for personal music players at the time, which were all either black or gray. However, Jobs immediately knew that this design would help the iPod stand out against the competition and also recognized the sublime visual elegance of having a white iPod flowing into white headphones.

Thus, there were no committee meetings; Jobs knew it was a powerful idea and gave the go ahead. Jobs also made a similar decision with the scroll wheel on the ipod. The Apple design and engineering teams were uncertain of how to navigate the multitude of songs that would be stored on the iPod. After trying an early prototype of the scroll wheel, Jobs saw its potential and quickly selected it as the solution to focus on developing, even though such a technology had never been utilized on any other previous electronic device.

The last important decision I want to discuss involves his work at Pixar.

As with all of his products, Steve Jobs obsessed over Toy Story before its release, and deeply believed in the quality of the film. Thus, he made the daring decision to take Pixar public a week after the release of the film.

Even Pixar executives Ed Catmull and John Lasseter, veteran leaders themselves, were nervous about the decision and considered it very risky, and thus preferred to wait a few more films before going public. Of course, the daring decision paid off for Jobs, and Pixar was the most successful IPO of the year, and it made Jobs a billionaire. More importantly though, the infusion of capital gave Pixar a powerful war chest, which allowed Pixar far more leverage in future negotiations with Disney and allowed it operate with a much greater degree of autonomy.

Leadership is not easy. In fact, of all of his talents, this one may be the rarest. Even among the countless large corporations of the world, world-class leadership is something very difficult to come by.

Steve Wozniak and other Apple engineers had more technical knowledge than Jobs. Jony Ive and many other designers who collaborated with Jobs had just as much aesthetic talent as he did. However, with the exception of Elon musk, it is difficult to think of another entrepreneur of the modern era who has the same ability to coordinate the big picture and long term strategy the way Jobs did.

Interestingly, this is actually the reason why musk is still ceo of both Tesla and SpaceX, though he would prefer to devote much more of his attention on Space X; however, so far, Musk has still not found someone with the leadership ability to serve as CEO of a technology company as complex and cutting-edge as Tesla; in many ways, Tesla would require the next Steve Jobs, and so far an individual with this level of leadership talent has not yet appeared on the world stage.

Chapter Seven: The Master Communicator

Of course, one cannot speak about the genius of Steve jobs without commenting on his abilities as a master marketer and salesman.

Jobs’ detractors always emphasize how he couldn’t program and was not an engineer. And this is of course true, it was men like Steve Wozniak who were primarily responsible for the technical aspects of products like the Apple 2.

However, Jobs built something that was perhaps even more valuable.

He built the Apple brand.

He was the one who determined what the core values of Apple were, especially during its renaissance, but more importantly he was able to communicate those values in a compelling way that the world just could not ignore.

Jobs selected the agency Chiat/Day and director Ridley Scott to produce the legendary “1984” advertisement, and fought to have it play during the Super Bowl, even though the Apple board actually hated it.

The advertisement was extremely effective at depicting Apple as the rebellious, young, iconoclastic warrior pitted against the dystopian corporate oligarchs at IBM and other legacy technology companies.

Later, Jobs worked closely with the same agency to create the “Think Different” series of advertisements, which helped to revitalize the Apple brand upon his return.

Though it is remembered now as one of the greatest marketing campaigns in history, at the time it was a bold and risky branding strategy.

There were no mentions of the hardware or software capabilities of the Macintosh computers. In fact, there was no mention of computers at all. But it did serve to associate the Apple brand with iconoclasts and rebels and artists once again.

Jobs was a master of branding, and for him, branding was about identifying the core values of a company, and then broadcasting those values in a bold, artful, and unique way.

Next of course, his powerful public speaking and presentation skills must be mentioned as well.

Though he is well known around the world as a master salesman, he never came across as a cheesy or insincere salesman during his speeches.

I think that the most important reason for this is because he had a genuine, passionate belief in his products, and that authenticity always came through in his presentations.

Furthermore, he also had a talent for communicating the unique value and benefits of each of his products in very succinct, clever, and creative ways.

Chapter Eight: Weaving Together Art and Technology

One of the most fascinating and unique aspects of Steve Jobs’ character is that he always stood at what he called the intersection of the humanities and technology, and this powerful synergistic mindset was infused into every major endeavor he undertook in life.

It was also reflected in his choice of personal heroes, which included not only technical and entrepreneurial titans like Hewlett, Packard, and Henry Ford, but also artistic titans such as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Bob Dylan.

In fact, as Walter Isaacson put it, much of Jobs' genius arose not only from the merging of art and science, but an even deeper belief that there should be no distinction between the two.

Steve Jobs is celebrated as a genius today, not because he was the best in the world at one thing. He is celebrated because he was highly gifted, though not necessarily the best, in multiple areas. He was a polymath and renaissance man, much in the tradition of his heroes Da Vinci and Michelangelo.

In the modern era, specialists are often the most highly valued, and many believe that the more one is able to niche down, the better. Of course, this is definitely one well-established pathway to success, especially in the medical field, and there can be dangers of becoming a jack-of-all-trades and a master of none. However, that being said, I think that the modern era does not do enough to recognize the value of polymaths and people who have diverse skill sets.

In the case of Steve Jobs, his various talents and interests allowed him to see connections that others did not, and enabled fruitful cross-pollination between art and technology that changed our entire world.

Perhaps you are someone with one major passion and interest in life - you will likely attain great success by homing in on that one thing. However, perhaps you are someone with as many as three or four major talents. Don’t feel bad about devoting study and energy to all of them. As you can see from the life of Steve Jobs, that intersection of those disparate fields of knowledge could very well lead to a great innovation that no one else is able to see. I personally believe that individuals with diverse skill sets will be more valuable during our modern digital age than even during the renaissance itself, since our modern world is so incredibly rife with rapid change, disruption, and an abundance of hidden opportunities.

Chapter Nine: Vision

It is said that great chess masters have the ability to think several steps ahead.

Thus, one general measure of intelligence is how far someone is able to think ahead, and many of the best leaders in history were said to think in terms of decades.

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. I think Henry Ford once said, “If I’d asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me, ‘A faster horse!’ ” 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.

-Steve Jobs

In the case of Steve Jobs, he was definitely able to see further into the future than most others, and hence predicted the rise of personal computing, the rise of computer animation, as well as the rise of smartphones and tablets.

More importantly, he had keen insights not only on what technologies would be developed in the future, but how they would serve humanity and integrate within society at large.

For example, let’s take a look at him talking about how personal computing would come to augment the human mind, at a time when most of the population still thought of personal computers as a passing novelty or a glorified calculator.

In business, many executives are generals who are fighting the last war. This means that they rely on old and well established strategies. In some industries where little change occurs, such as the soft drink business, this can work well enough. However, in any field that involves technology, this only ensures that you will be left behind.

Steve Jobs deeply understood that in the technology business, innovating faster than your competitors is an absolute necessity, and this is why both Apple and Pixar were always years ahead of everyone else while he was at the helm.

Furthermore, it is important to also note that Jobs not only saw far into the future, but he also had very broad vision as well. That is, he constantly was aware of the larger strategy at play in his companies, and how his various products intertwined with one another.

For example, after developing the iPod, he immediately began to focus on bringing all of the various record labels on board to create the iTunes store, as he knew that this would increase the value of his device exponentially. Shortly after releasing the iPad, he realized that most people now owned multiple Apple devices that were difficult to sync with one another, and hence quickly began to work on the iCloud.

So Steve Jobs had both far reaching and wide-ranging vision, and both contributed much to his success.

Can One Human Being Change The World?

It is undeniable that Jobs lived by his own personal philosophy, and he definitely left his dent in the universe. His products have changed our global society forever in so many ways.

His products have changed the way we work, the way we spend our leisure time, the way we communicate, and even the way we form and maintain relationships.

While it is undeniable that Jobs changed our world, not all of the changes have been positive.

The iPhone is the most successful product in all of human history, and the ubiquity of mobile devices, from the first world to the third world, coupled with the unstoppable rise of social media, has created a new digital layer of reality that is woven into every aspect of the real world.

Because of this, more human time and attention than ever before is devoted to screens, rather than being present to real-life interactions and experiences.

That being said, I do believe that the positive effects of his creations very much outweigh the negatives.

Many industries have been completely revolutionized by his work, and in some cases his work has, both directly and indirectly, created entirely new industries altogether.

The massive power of the various social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and YouTube…are all reliant upon powerful and omnipresent smartphones as their hardware and operating system foundation.

Due to his vision, computer animation is now an immensely popular and respected form of entertainment, and many of Pixar's films are rightly considered works of great art and major cultural contributions to our modern civilization.

He helped to transform the computer from a hulking industrial monster into a friendly part of the home office, both functional and aesthetically beautiful.

Lastly, with the advent of the iphone and other mobile devices, he has changed the very structure of society and the human mind itself. In the modern era, almost every human being on earth has a miniature supercomputer they carry with them everywhere and never strays more than a few feet from them at any given time. In this way, every human being has now become a functional cyborg, and is augmented by a true “bicycle of the mind” during every waking moment.

In some ways this can be a negative, as you could easily waste hours on end on your smartphone, scrolling Facebook or Instagram, or watching Youtube prank videos.

However, it also means that you have all of human knowledge, the modern Library of Alexandria, at your very fingertips, 24/7.

It means that you have magic maps available to you at all times that tell you the most efficient ways of getting from point A to point B, while taking traffic patterns into consideration.

It allows creatives like myself to create passion projects and easily share them with the entire world, in a way never before possible in the history of media.

It means that if you can just put an iPad into the hands of a child who lives in a developing nation, he or she has access to a world-class education for absolutely free.

I mean, isn’t it amazing that today, simply by owning even the most rudimentary of mobile devices, you can receive business mentorship from Steve Jobs himself, with the simple touch of a screen, even while sitting on a bus or train?

In many ways I find Jobs very inspiring because he is an example of how much of an effect an individual human being - a single mind, a single soul - was able to influence the wider world at large.

Most people tend to think of themselves as small and insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

But studying the life of Steve Jobs and his advice, it becomes apparent that each of us matter more than we realize, and have far greater influence upon the world than we realize.

Just like Jobs, each of us has a unique contribution or gift we are destined to endow upon the world, and no matter how outwardly big or small, it will have a ripple effect beyond anything we can imagine.

If there is just one thing I want you to take away from this film, it is that each of us has the power to change the world for the better, and like Steve Jobs, we just need to have the conviction, the courage, and the tenacity, to do so.

Inspirational Steve Jobs Quotes:

Let’s go invent tomorrow rather than worrying about what happened yesterday.

I’m actually as proud of many of the things we haven’t done as the things we have done.

The products suck! There’s no sex in them anymore!

For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.

Details matter, it’s worth waiting to get it right.

Get closer than ever to your customers. So close that you tell them what they need well before they realize it themselves.

The doers are the major thinkers. The people that really create the things that change this industry are both the thinker and doer in one person.

I do not adopt softness towards others because I want to make them better.

If you don’t love it, you’re going to fail.

In the broadest context, the goal is to seek enlightenment – however you define it.

Ultimately, it comes down to taste. It comes down to trying to expose yourself to the best things that humans have done and then try to bring those things into what you’re doing.

The most precious thing that we all have with us is time.

We do no market research. We don’t hire consultants. We just want to make great products.

I think all of us need to be on guard against arrogance which knocks at the door whenever you’re successful.

The LISA people wanted to do something great. And the Mac people want to do something insanely great. The difference shows.

I always advise people – Don’t wait! Do something when you are young, when you have nothing to lose, and keep that in mind.

That’s why we started Apple, we said you know, we have absolutely nothing to lose. I was 20 years old at the time, Woz was 24-25, so we have nothing to lose. We have no families, no children, no houses. Woz had an old car. I had a Volkswagen van, I mean, all we were going to lose is our cars and the shirts off our back.

That’s been one of my mantras – focus and simplicity.

We had everything to gain. And we figured even if we crash and burn, and lose everything, the experience will have been worth ten times the cost.

We are very careful about what features we add because we can’t take them away.

The really great person will keep on going and find the key, underlying principle of the problem, and come up with a beautiful elegant solution that works.

Don’t take it all too seriously. If you want to live your life in a creative way, as an artist, you have to not look back too much. You have to be willing to take whatever you’ve done and whoever you were and throw them away.

There is a tremendous amount of craftsmanship between a great idea and a great product.

One way to remember who you are is to remember who your heroes are.

People who know what they’re talking about don’t need PowerPoint.

We were really working fourteen-to-eighteen-hour days, seven days a week. For like, two years, three years. That was our life. But we loved it, we were young, and we could do it.

People judge you on your performance, so focus on the outcome. Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.

A small team of A players can run circles around a giant team of B and C players.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

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’re not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify and 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 crazy, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me… Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful… that’s what matters to me.

Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice.

If today were the last of your life, would you do what you were going to do today?

I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out okay.

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.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: ‘If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.’ It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: ‘If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ And whenever the answer has been ‘no’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking and don’t settle.

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.

The only thing you have in your life is time. If you invest that time in yourself to have great experiences that are going to enrich you, then you can’t possibly lose.

On being fired from Apple and called back 12 years later: What a circle of life. You know? Life is just always mysterious and surprising, and you never know what’s around the next corner.

So this is what we’ve chosen to do with our life. We could be sitting in a monastery somewhere in Japan. We could be out sailing. Some of the executive team could be playing golf. They could be running other companies. And we’ve all chosen to do this with our lives. So it better be damn good. It better be worth it. And we think it is.

In business, if I knew earlier what I know now, I’d have probably done some things a lot better than I did, but I also would’ve probably done some other things a lot worse. But so what? It’s more important to be engaged in the present.

So that’s our approach. Very simple, and we’re really shooting for Museum of Modern Art quality. The way we’re running the company, the product design, the advertising, it all comes down to this: Let’s make it simple. Really simple.

People know how to deal with a desktop intuitively. If you walk into an office, there are papers on the desk. The one on the top is the most important. People know how to switch priority. Part of the reason we model our computers on metaphors like the desktop is that we can leverage this experience people already have.

I think the things you most regret in life are things you didn’t do. What you really regret was never asking that girl to dance.

I want it to be as beautiful as possible, even if it’s inside the box. A great carpenter isn’t going to use lousy wood for the back of a cabinet, even though nobody’s going to see it.

Real artists sign their work.