I just finished reading the book on Steve Jobs, written by Walter Isaacson, and if you haven’t read it yet, I highly recommend it. The book is a pretty open portrayal of the man, it is well written and it ties together the stages of Job’s life very well.
Now, you would never confuse me with an Apple geek (or is the PC guys that are geeks? can’t remember), but Steve Jobs is one of the personalities that is larger than life and that you just want to read more about. Even though I know the Apple and Jobs story at a high level it was still a great book because it touched on areas of Jobs’ private and business life that I previously knew little or nothing about. For instance, I didn’t realize the level of impact he had in Pixar, nor did I know about some of his odd eating habits and his hygiene issues early on in his career.
On a product and technology level what I found compelling was Job’s relentess pursuit of the perfect product. Sometimes to his or the company’s detriment. Good enough didn’t cut it. But at the end of the product creation process, he and the people at his companies were able to pull together a variety of seemingly unrelated technologies into one device or movie (in the case of Pixar) and create products that completely re-defined how we used an looked at cell phones, computers, music, movies and much, much more.
On a business level, I found it intriguing how both control and creativity co-existed within the same company. Job’s insisted on almost complete control over product decisions right down the the most minute detail but fostered an environment of creativity, idea exchange and brainstorming from his engineering, design and managers right up to his board of directors. He was brutal on them if they had half thought out ideas or he thought they were idiots. But he kept tapping the best of them for new and innovative ways to incorporate ideas into Apple’s products.
On a personal level, it made me wonder (as I often do reading biographies about compelling people), if I need to develop some sort of odd compulsion (such as an eating disorder) in order to become hugely successful. Be it Howard Hughes or Steve Jobs all the famous people seem to have some sort of compulsion. These compulsions are likely by-products of passionate personalities, but it makes one wonder if it would be a good idea to develop a compulsion to only eat green M & Ms or something to that effect just in case somebody wrote a book about you.
On the big idea front, the book speaks loudly to simplicity. How can we take one more step out of this to make it easier for our users. Less is more. There is a paradox in this idea, in that it takes a great deal of complexity to make things simple. Particularly technology. And arguably, the less is more idea gets completely turned on its head when you consider the explosion of apps available on products such as the iPhone® and iPad® (Definitely more of those app thingies around). But when you examine the app explosion, the apps that are most popular often do one thing really well and don’t try to do too much. This makes them easier to use and more intuitive, which again brings us back to the idea of simplicity.
For me a great book is one that gets my mind going, sparks new thoughts, ideas and new ways to look at problems. After reading it I found that I had all this creative energy built up in my brain that I could apply to my work and to a lesser extent on my personal life. As I progress into 2012, I hope that I can apply this to Spira on both a marketing front and also to the creative process within Spira to help improve our product, our inner culture and bring more simplicity into our products.
Pick it up or download it, it is a great read.
