Steve Jobs learnt the value of intuition from India: Isaacson

Steve Jobs learnt the value of intuition from India: Isaacson

11 OCT, 2012, 12.30AM IST, ULLEKH NP,ET BUREAU 


CEO-author Walter Isaacson, who wrote Steve Jobs' eponymous, authorised biography, says the iconic co-founder of Apple Inc didn't believe in throwing his money away in charity and instead thought his products would help people live better.

"(While writing Steve Jobs) I asked him about charity. He said that he would be able to do more to reform education, for example, by creating an iPad that had interactive textbooks than by being a philanthropist giving his money away. I think that one of things about Jobs is that he focused - he didn't like to do 50 different things," Isaacson, who was in Delhi on a business visit, told reporters. The CEO of Washington-based think tank Aspen Institute, he has earlier authored biographies of luminaries such as Benjamin Franklin and Albert Einstein. Isaacson's Steve Jobs has so far sold more than 1,40,000 copies in India.

The author says he had "close to 50 very long conversations (with Jobs) some of them lasting all afternoon or most of the day" for the purpose of writing the book. "But, he never fully engaged with me on the topic of philanthropy. I asked him a few times. So there were some topics that I felt he didn't fully address such as philanthropy and manufacturing in China. He just wasn't interested in focusing on it. There were things I asked him and I didn't get much of an answer," Isaacson said. Apple, which has hired Taiwanese manufacturer Foxconn to make many of its products, has come under sharp attack over harsh labour conditions and worker unrest at the latter's plants in China.

THE IMPERFECT GUY

Isaacson concedes that his book is not about a perfect person. "He (Jobs) would have been a better person had he cared more about philanthropy. But I did admire the fact that he focused on things more important to him. That is the way he helped change the world," he noted.

Among his 'subjects', Isaacson agreed that Einstein was in "a quantum orbit, as a genius who is higher than anybody else". However, he added: "Franklin and Jobs had creativity and imagination that I tried to capture and I do think a hundred years from now people will still be looking back on Steve Jobs the way they look back at Thomas Edison or Walt Disney, people who created lots of things that were very imaginative."

Isaacson, who had also written a biography of former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger, says the experience was "nerve-wracking" because "you are dealing with a strong personality". He had almost decided not to write about a living person until Jobs happened.

"I got to know Steve Jobs a thousand times more about every moment of his life than I would about Franklin or Einstein... I was spending day after day with him telling me everything. It is very rare that a biographer gets as much information and access as Steve was willing to give for this book," he said, emphasising that Jobs' passion for perfection and impatience are inseparable.

INNOVATOR VS DIFFICULT PERSON

"Steve's success as an innovator was more important than the fact that he could yell at people or park in a 'handicapped' slot," he said.

Isaacson says many top execs have told him after reading the book that Jobs was like them because they were tough bosses. "You can't be like Steve just because you are tough. You also have to have people very loyal to you. It is easy to be tough. It is not as easy to be inspiring as Steve was," he said laughing.