When Apple launches the iPad3, people are likely to speculate about how long the company can sustain its leadership as a technology innovator in the post-Jobs era. In my opinion, Walter Isaacson’s excellent biography of Steve Jobs should help assure investors that Apple’s culture of innovation will live on.
Reading the book “Steve Jobs” made me realize that if I had purchased Apple stock immediately after I heard Jobs speak for the first time, my retirement account today would be substantially more robust. At the time, I didn’t fully realize I was witnessing something historic.
It was at the Seybold Future of Publishing Conference in San Francisco in October of 1997—a few months after Steve had been brought back to rescue Apple as iCEO (interim CEO). It was the first major public appearance that Microsoft CEO Bill Gates and Steve Jobs made after Microsoft had announced a $150 million investment in Apple.
I was editing a two-year-old magazine about large-format digital printing and was attending Seybold to get a long-range preview of all types of printing, publishing, and the Internet.
At the Seybold keynote sessions, I felt privileged to be ushered to one of the three front rows reserved for the press. The auditorium was packed with the entrepreneurs and computer graphic designers who would be responsible for taking publishing, marketing communications, and e-commerce to the Internet.
Bill Gates presented a keynote session on Wednesday, October 1. He shared visions of such far-off technologies as e-books and virtual conferences, talking about how e-readers would save trees and webinars would reduce the need for companies to spend big bucks on trade-show exhibits. But the crowd wasn’t very receptive to Bill’s speech.
When Steve Jobs took the stage the next day, the crowd cheered wildly, welcoming him like a returning hero. The applause only intensified after Steve gave a big-screen preview of the now-famous “Think Different” branding campaign. The presentation showed black-and-white portraits of Albert Einstein, Mahatma Gandhi, John Lennon, Bob Dylan, Thomas Edison and others who weren’t afraid to take risks to achieve great things.
Believe me: That ad-campaign preview blew a blast of fresh air into a conference in which we were all being smothered by headache-inducing technical specs such as processor speed, memory, and software functions. The “Think Different” campaign asked us to imagine some of the great things that creative people and risk-takers could accomplish with computers. Needless to say, the Seybold audience of creative professionals loved it.
A Pass-By in the Pressroom
I saw Jobs speak a few other times, introducing products at subsequent Seybold events and a MacWorld Conference or two. So I can’t remember exactly what year my close encounter with Steve Jobs occurred.
All I remember is that I was standing in the entryway to the pressroom having a lively conversation with my publisher and two other people. We were oblivious to the fact that we were blocking the pressroom entrance until Steve breezed right through the middle of four-person cluster. He was so close I could have easily patted him on the back.
It took me a moment to recognize him. When I’d seen him onstage earlier that day, he had loomed so large in front of the big screen. In person, he was probably closer to my own very average height. But the glasses, turtleneck, and jeans were unmistakable.
No one in our group stopped chattering as Steve passed by. In fact, they probably didn’t realize it was Jobs, until I said, “Do you know who that was? Wow!”
The Biography
Part of the fun of reading Walter Isaacson’s biography was recognizing where my little encounter with Steve fit into the overall timeline of Apple and Mac technology. Plus, Steve was just nine months younger than I am. We came of age in the early 70s and grew up with the same musical and cultural influences. His death reminds me that no one ever knows which birthday will be the last.
Before I was a magazine editor, I was a stay-at-home mom for seven years. My husband and I invested about $10,000 in a state-of-the-art Mac IIci and Apple LaserJet printer so I could run a desktop publishing business from home. Reading the Steve Jobs bio made me understand that Apple had enabled me to be a pioneering “solopreneuer.” (My daughter, now in her 20s, recalls using that ultra-primitive Mac to create storybooks that she could print out and color.)
Creative Pros in the Workplace
If you haven’t yet read Isaacson’s biography yet, I encourage you to do so. Not only is it a timely story about a complicated person, but it also helps educate readers about the role of creatives in the workplace.
If Steve wasn’t very good at managing people, it was mostly because he was so passionate about creating insanely great products that people would love. He didn’t need market research or focus groups to tell him what people would like.
Here are just two Steve Jobs quotes in Walter Isaacson’s book that articulate the view of many people who are born seeing things differently:
“When I went to Pixar, I became aware of a great divide. Tech companies don’t understand creativity. They don’t appreciate intuitive thinking, like the ability of an A&R guy at a music label to listen to a hundred artists and have a feel for which five might be successful. And they think that creative people just sit around on couches all day and are undisciplined, because they’ve not seen how driven and disciplined the creative folks at places like Pixar are. On the other hand, music companies are completely clueless about technology…I’m one of the few people who understands how producing technology requires intuition and creativity, and how producing something artistic takes real discipline.”
“The older I get, the more I see how much motivations matter. The Zune was crappy because the people at Microsoft don’t really love music or art the way we do. We won because we personally love music. We made the iPod for ourselves, and when you’re doing something for yourself, or your best friend or family, you’re not going to cheese out. If you don’t love something, you’re not going to go the extra mile, work the extra weekend, or challenge the status quo as much.”
Thinking Different
So, let’s see. If I had been thinking more about my own financial future in 1997, an investment in Apple stock would have paid off handsomely. But at least I have the priceless memory of seeing Steve Jobs on-stage for product launches and being close enough in the pressroom to have reached out and said “Thank you for not being afraid to think different!”
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