Friends, Scholars, & Entrepreneurs,
I write today with honor and respect for Steve Jobs and the business he built. Whereas other companies employ enormous research budgets and crowds of testers, Apple relied on the feedback of a single user. Instead of appeasing everyone, their designers and engineers just had to satisfy the man. Famously fastidious, Steve built Apple into the most valuable company in the world, one screw and bevel at a time.
There are two driving forces for any of us: inspiration from within and impulses from without. You can either go with the flow or struggle against it. Then there are those who manage to change the flow for everyone else. Though the crowd has wisdom, only individuals can lead. If a good product fills a void in our lives, a great product helps us recognize what we never knew was missing. With his head in the proverbial iClouds, Steve built and we followed. It was all about Jobs’ creation.
Nevertheless, great leaders need support. No one ever achieves stand-out success without help or inspiration. If you don’t believe me, read Gladwell's Outliers or Wu's The Master Switch. Steve, Bill, Tom, or Warren each had help - in fact, ample help to overcome otherwise insurmountable obstacles. When the tallies are counted, I know I’ll be among those evangelists for the man who said these words:
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. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. 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.
With one less visionary leader among us, we should all ask ourselves a little louder, “How can I design a better world?”
Wistfully yours,
Andrew Magliozzi
