1. I read Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. What surprised me the most about this book was how, although it was long, it was extremely entertaining and interesting and I never really got caught up with how long it is. I most admired Steve Jobs' tenacity and sense of innovation when it came to creating new things, it was said that he had a "reality distortion field" because of the way he molded reality to his own will. I least admired the way that Steve handled the situation surrounding his first child, Lisa. He denied that she was his child during the entire pregnancy, later regretting his treatment of the situation and the fact that he could make such statements about his own child. Steve did encounter failure many times in his career, most notably when he left Apple and started his own company, NeXT. NeXT is where Steve made some of the biggest mistakes of his career, but he also learned his lesson from this failure and used it to help Apple when NeXT was bought out by Apple in order to bring Steve Jobs back into the fold.
2. I noticed that Steve exhibited many competencies including his penchant for marketing and innovation, as well as his insatiable hunger for perfection. This was displayed during many parts in his career, most notably through the accounts of some of his employees, which said that he strived for perfection so much that oftentimes he would listen to their ideas, berate them for being stupid, and then they would hear him presenting the ideas a week later. This extremist perfectionism carried into the way that Jobs looked at the world, always seeing the world as black and white, which he is quoted as meaning that people are either "enlightened" or an "asshole".
3. One part of the reading that was confusing to me was when they started talking about technical situations involving the Macs and computers because I do not understand technical jargon that well and was forced to look up some of the more technical terms in order to understand what was being talked about.
4. If I was able to ask two question to Steve Jobs, I would ask: "What made you want to invest in Pixar after you left Apple?" and "What was the moment that made you realize just how successful you actually were?" because I would be very interested to get into his thought process about the decision that made him a billionaire and also I would like to know just what made him actually believe his success for the very first time.
5. I believe that Steve Jobs was very strongly opinionated about hard work and believed that hard work was necessary in order to create the perfect product, as evidenced by his incessant demands that his computers had to be of the highest quality and styles and constantly innovated.
I’m glad you picked to read Steve Jobs. As you know, all of us participating in entrepenuership read many of the books. We all took the time to complete the necessary reading, and it was very rewarding. I can tell from your reflection how much value reading that book added to your life. Reading your reflection added value to my life as well.
ReplyDeleteBy reading your reflection on the book and Steve Jobs, it is evident that you were invested in the reading and was able to gain a lot from it. My reading didn't revolve around Steve Jobs, so it was interesting to read your reflection and see how your entrepreneur differed from the one in my reading, and compare their outlooks on hard work. Overall, I found your reflection to be thorough, clear, and elaborate with information that can be beneficial key takeaways in your life.
ReplyDeleteI have yet to read Steve Jobs so this was very pleasant to read to get an idea of what the biography was about especially with your description of it. One thing I love reading about in this reading list is the unique aspect of each business related figures we read about. There are those who work with what that have, those who work with what is there at the time, and those who work with what isn't there. There are those who are brilliant business people while there are others who are innovators and that is what I like when reading a different book among the reading list.
ReplyDeleteHey I also picked The Steve Jobs bio. Walter did a great job documenting his life. I have honestly never known much about Steve Jobs in the first place so the entire story was very new to me. I like you Pixar question alot. That took my off guard. I think it was stated somewhere that he inherited a crew that worked on some of the innovative visual the starwars movies. And there was a person there who had a great dream of making fully animeted films and Steve was convinced by that person to do it.
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