Tag: steve jobs

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Design Education Innovation Reading

Latest Read: To Pixar and Beyond

To Pixar and Beyond: My Unlikely Journey with Steve Jobs to Make Entertainment History by Lawrence Levy proves to be a wonderful read. Levy, the former Pixar CFO reveals significant financial challenges Pixar faced upon his arrival.

To Pixar and Beyond

Steve Jobs purchased Pixar from George Lucas for $5 million and then invested $5 million into the company. Steve brought Lawrence to Pixar in 1994. Lawrence Levy shares how Disney really put the screws to Pixar. Disney played hardball with a small company struggling and got away with it.

Lawrence shares how he and Steve took walks around their neighborhood around Palo Alto on Saturdays. He described many of the topics of their walks. This reveals much about Steve’s view of the company. Steve was growing Pixar to be a rockstar animation company.

My insights gained from To Pixar and Beyond is that Steve always saw the company holding an amazing future. There were roadblocks with Disney at times, yet Pixar was unknowingly growing into a change agent for Hollywood.

Much has been written about Steve’s control of Pixar stock. This included a negative image held among Pixar staff when he purchased the company. To be blunt, Jobs burned over $10 million of personal money to keep Pixar afloat. At the time the company really did not have a solid business revenue model for many years.

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Design Education Innovation Reading

Latest Read: Focus

Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence by Daniel Goleman is a book for our coronavirus moment. Chapter 12: Patterns, Systems, and Messes addresses the 1918 flu pandemic. Does Focus have your attention now? Goleman provides many insights we need to understand today. He delivers direct lessons for our new coronavirus world.

Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence

Maybe what readers should enjoy is a quick test on your reading memory. What? A memory test in a book? Ah…Yes. This approach brings into sharp ‘focus’ how we read.

Focus addresses how business needs to pay more attention to the market. The refrigerator business does not change. The mobile handset market dramatically changed.

Goleman addresses the sharp rise and sudden fall of Blackberry. A smartphone market lesson would not be complete without a story of Steve Jobs and the iPhone.

And to some extent what Goleman may have missed was the demise of Blackberry was their simple lack of ‘focus’ on 4G networks. Yes, Blackberry actually stayed with 3G, did not embrace 4G just as mobile began BYOD.

Blackberry’s leadership (engineering backgrounds) led them to success very early in the mobile device marketplace. They rested on their laurels. The iPhone killed their company. Smartphones do not equal, as Goleman suggests a refrigerator marketplace. He points to many lessons about corporate shooting stars.

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Globalization Innovation Reading Smartphone Tablet

Latest Read: Dogfight: How Apple and Google Went to War and Started a Revolution

Dogfight: How Apple and Google Went to War and Started a Revolution is a remarkable book about the explosive relationship between Apple and Google as smartphones and tablets came to dominate the PC marketplace. This is a historical view of the final battle of Steve Job’s life and the work by Google to win over the digital battlefield from both Apple and Microsoft.

How Apple and Google went to war and started a revolutionDogfight is a smashing success in revealing how human technology companies really are today and the enormous demands they place upon their employees. They create the tools for our digital lifestyles and the means in which it drives new business models (and society) on a global scale. Its truly magnificent.

Since Dogfight is centered around the last days of Steve Jobs many readers may be intrigued to learn how he was personally making Apple vulnerable to Google’s Android by placing so much trust in Sergey Brin, Larry Page and Schmidt. Interesting lessons for us all.

The most interesting aspect for me was understanding the complex relationship between Google and Apple when Microsoft was in charge of the PC market. Clearly Microsoft missed the smartphone and tablet market and now may be forever a forgone player in that space. Even industry leaders are acknowledging that in the mobile space there are only two OS platforms to consider: iOS and Android. Amazing how Microsoft lost its way.

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Design Education Innovation Reading Technology

Latest read: Creativity, Inc.

Not long ago I began reading Creativity, Inc. Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration the story of Pixar written by co-fonder Ed Catmull.

Creativity, Inc.On the surface you may consider this a story about animation movies beginning with Toy Story. However, you would be wrong. Some may want this to be a historical look at the company from Lucasfilm and their acquisition by Steve Jobs to the merger with Disney. Others want to see the inside of Pixar as Jobs ran the company.

However this book is about management. And, it does not disappoint.

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