Libor Kubín Jay Elliot, former senior vice president of Apple wrote the book The Steve Jobs Journey. Jablíčkár brings you the first abbreviated sample.
1. PASSION FOR THE PRODUCT
During my ten years at IBM, I became intimately familiar with many brilliant scientists with PhDs who were doing exceptional work and yet were frustrated because very little of their input was accepted and made into a product. Even in PARC I could smell the musty smell of frustration. So I was not surprised to learn that the company has a turnover rate of twenty-five percent, one of the highest in the industry.
When I started working at Apple, the main source of work enthusiasm was the development group working on what was to become a breakthrough product, the future Lisa computer. It was supposed to be a complete departure from Apple II technology and take the company in a completely new direction while utilizing some of the innovations that Apple engineers had seen at PARC. Steve told me that Lisa would be a pioneering act that would "put a hole in the universe". When someone says something like that, you can't help but feel a sacred reverence. Steve's statement has been an inspiration to me ever since, a reminder that you don't get the people who work for you burning with enthusiasm unless you're burning with it yourself…and you show it to everyone.
Lisa's development had been going on for two years, but that wasn't important. The technology that Steve saw at PARC was going to change the world, and the work on the Lisa had to be modified in accordance with the new way of thinking. Steve tried to get the Lisa team excited about what he saw at PARC. “You have to change course,” he still insisted stubbornly. Lisa's engineers and programmers worshiped Woz and didn't want Steve to redirect them.
At the time, Apple resembled a ship plowing the waters at full speed with many people on the bridge but no real leadership. Although the company was barely four years old, it enjoyed annual sales revenues of around $300 million. Steve, the co-founder of the company, was no longer as influential as in the beginning, when there were only two Steves, with Woz gravitating towards technology and SJ taking care of everything else. The CEO left, early major investor Mike Markkula served as interim CEO, and Michael Scott ("Scotty") served as president. Both were more than capable, but neither had what it took to run a booming technology company. I believe that Mike, the second largest shareholder, was more interested in leaving the company than in the day-to-day problems of a fast-growing technology company. These two decision makers didn't want to delay Lisa's launch, which Steve's changes would cause. The project was already behind schedule, and the idea that the already finished work should be thrown out and a new path started was simply unacceptable for them.
In order to force his demands on the team that worked on Lisa and the men running the company, Steve prepared a plan in his mind. He gets the position of Vice President of New Product Development, making him the commander-in-chief of Lisa's team, with the power to order a change of direction as he sees fit.
However, Markkula and Scott changed the organizational chart and gave Steve the formal position of chairman of the board, explaining that this would make him the company's front-runner for Apple's upcoming IPO. They argued that having a charismatic 25-year-old as a spokesperson would help Apple increase its stock price and acquire more and more wealth.
Steve was really suffering. He was unhappy that Scotty had sewn a shed on him without informing or consulting him - it was his company after all! He was disgusted by the impossibility of being directly involved in the work on Lisa. In fact, it made him very angry.
The trip meant even more. The new head of the Lisa group, John Couch, asked Steve to stop visiting his engineers and disturbing them. He should have stood aside and let them be.
Steve Jobs never heard the word "no" and was deaf to "we can't" or "you mustn't".
What do you do when you have a revolutionary product in mind but your company shows no interest in it? I have noticed that Steve is fully focused in such situations. He did not act like a child whose toy was taken away, he became disciplined and decisive.
He had never before had someone in his own company tell him, "Hands off!" It happens to very few people. On the one hand, in the board meetings Steve took me to, I could see that he could run such sessions more intelligently as chairman than the older, wiser, and much more experienced CEOs sitting around the table. He had a lot of up-to-date data on Apple's financial position—profits, cash flow, sales of the Apple II in various market segments and sales areas—and a host of other business details. Today, everyone thinks of him as an incredible technologist, a product creator extraordinaire, but he is someone much bigger, and has been from the very beginning.
Nevertheless, they took away his opportunity to prove himself as a person with a bright brain and a creator of new products. Steve had a clear vision of the future of computing pounding in his head, but he had nowhere to go with it. The door to Lisa's group slammed in his face and locked tight.
What now?
It was a time when Apple was flush with cash, millions of dollars in the bank from growing sales of the Apple II. The ready money stimulated the creation of small innovation projects throughout the company. Any society benefits from such a mental atmosphere, even one whose motto is to try to create a brave new world by inventing something entirely new, something that has never been here before.
From my first week at Apple, I could sense the passion and drive that energized everyone. I imagined two engineers meeting in a hallway, one of them describing an idea he's been toying with, and his partner saying something like, "That's great, you should do something with that." And the first goes back to the lab , he convenes a team and spends months developing his idea. I wouldn't hesitate to bet that this was happening throughout society at the time. Most of the projects went nowhere and did not bring any profit, some copied what another group was already working on. But that didn't matter, many ideas were successful and brought a significant result. The company was flush with money and teeming with creative ideas.
[button color=”eg. black, red, blue, orange, green, light" link="http://jablickar.cz/jay-elliot-cesta-steva-jobse/#formular" target=""]You can order the book at a discounted price of CZK 269 .[/button]
[button color=”eg. black, red, blue, orange, green, light" link="http://clkuk.tradedoubler.com/click?p=211219&a=2126478&url=http://itunes.apple.com/cz/book/cesta-steva -jobse/id510339894″ target=”“]You can buy the electronic version in iBoostore for €7,99.[/button]
isacson's resume not enough? Do you think this will be worth the attention?
Walter Isaacson focuses more on the personality of Jobs, Jay Elliot writes about the management of the company. Each book is a little different - both in style and content, but I wouldn't dismiss any of them.
I still can't find it on the iBookstore, even though there was information that it would be released yesterday...
It depends on how quickly Apple approves the book. Unfortunately, they kind of hang around.
I think yes. Isacson wrote a biography based on interviews with people this is taken from a different perspective and experiences gathered directly from working for apple
I've had it since yesterday and it's quite good (I've only read a few pages) it costs 300 CZK (I bought it in a bookstore) I have almost all the Apple-themed books, so I was thinking about whether to buy it so that it's not a one-off like most