What I learned from rereading Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography by Walter Isaacson.
The saga of Steve Jobs is the Silicon Valley creation myth writ large, launching a startup in his parents garage and building it into the world's most valuable company.
He didn't invent many things outright, but he was a master at putting together ideas, art, and technology in ways that invented the future.
Some leaders push innovation by being good at the big picture.
Others do so by mastering details.
Jobs did both relentlessly.
Steve Jobs thus became the greatest business executive of our era, the one most certain to be remembered.
A century from now, history will place him in the pantheon, right next to Edison and Ford.
Biographers are supposed to have the last word, but this is a biography of Steve Jobs, even though he did not impose his legendary desire for control on this project.
I suspect that I would not be conveying the right feel for him the way he asserted himself in any situation if I just shuffled him onto history's stage without letting him have some last words.
Over the course of our conversations, there were many times when he reflected on what he hoped his legacy would be.
Here are those thoughts in his own words.
My passion has been to build an enduring company where people were motivated to make great products.
Everything else was secondary.
Sure, it was great to make a profit because that's what allowed you to make great products.
But the products, not the profits, were the motivation.
Scully flipped these priorities to where the goal was to make money.
It's a subtle difference, but it ends up meaning everything.
The people you hire, who gets promoted, what you discuss in meetings.
Some people say, give the customer what they want, but that's not my approach.
Our job is to figure out what they're going to want before they do.