Book Review:

«The Wit and Wisdom of Steve Jobs»

by Gennaro Salamone
An assignment work submitted to school of management and business studies
Mahatma Gandhi University Kottayam

Submitted by
Marina Selezneva

Submitted to
Dr. SIBY ZACHARIAS
Professor

SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT AND BUSINESS

STUDIES
MAHATMA GANDHI UNIVERSITY KOTTAYAM
SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT AND BUSINESS
STUDIES
MAHATHMA GANDHI UNIVERSITY

KOTTAYAM

CERTIFICATE

This is to certify that the Assignment work titled “Book Review: «The Wit and Wisdom of
Steve Jobs» by Gennaro Salamone” is an authentic record of the assignment work carried out
by Marina Selezneva with the complete participation of all the group members for the
internal assessment of MBA degree of School of Management and Business Studies, Mahatma
Gandhi University during the academic year 2020-2021.

Dr. SIBY ZACHARIAS

PROFESSOR
 DECLARATION
I, hereby declare that this assignment entitled “Book Review: «The Wit and Wisdom of

Steve Jobs» by Gennaro Salamone” is a bonafide record of research work done by me and

that no part of this assignment has been presented before for any Degree, Diploma, Associate

ship, Fellowship or other similar title or recognition of any university or institution to the best

of my knowledge and belief.

Place: Moscow, Russia

Date: 30.10.2020
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
First and foremost, praises and thanks to God, the Almighty, for His showers of blessings
throughout our project endeavour to complete the work successfully.

We take this opportunity to express our profound gratitude and deep regards to Dr. Siby
Zacharias, Professor, School of Management and Business Studies for his exemplary
guidance, monitoring and constant encouragement throughout the course of this project. The
blessing, help and guidance given by him carried us a long way in the journey of life on which
we are about to embark. Without his supervision and constant help this assignment would not
have been possible.

We are obliged to express our thanks to all the Teachers of School of Management and
Business Studies for their valuable suggestions and help during the course of this project.

We feel proud to record our gratitude to my Parents for their love, prayers, caring, and keen
interest shown to complete this project.
 CONTENTS

Sr No Title Page No
1. Introduction 6
2. Early life 7
3. Founding and Leaving Apple Computer 8
4. Steve Jobs and Pixar 10
5. Wife and Children 10
6. Battle with Cancer 11
7. Best inspiring quotes and my conclusions 11
8. Conclusion 14

Introduction
"The world rarely sees someone who has had the profound impact Steve
has had, the effects of which will be felt for many generations to come." -
Bill Gates

Steve Jobs was the legendary co-founder (with Steve Wozniak) and CEO of Apple Inc. His
leadership led to the development of a variety of Mac computers, iPods, iPhones, and iPads.

The Wit and Wisdom of Steve Jobs is a compilation of the best Steve Jobs quotes and sayings
from decades of leadership. It includes his take on leadership, business techniques, Apple
products, Lisa-Brennan-Jobs (Small Fry), Laurene Powell Jobs, Steve Wozniak (iWoz) and
life in general. It also includes a timeline detailing Jobs' adult life.

Steve Jobs is regarded as one of the most inspirational entrepreneurs that the world has ever
seen due to his contribution to innovate approach to design and technology. His disregard for
people who said it wasn’t possible and his vision for the future made him a pioneer. His
ability to motivate himself and the others around to produce ground breaking results always
interested me. So how did he motivate himself and the others around him to run through walls
for him?

The ‘reality distortion field’ is a term first used by Bud Tribble at Apple Computer in 1981, to
describe Steve Jobs’s charisma and its effects on the developers working on the Macintosh
project. The reality distortion field was said to be Steve Jobs’s ability to convince himself and
others to believe almost anything with a mix of charm, charisma, bravado, hyperbole,
marketing, appeasement and persistence. It was said to distort an audience’s sense of
proportion, scale of difficulties and size of improbability. Jobs could also use the reality
distortion field to appropriate other’s ideas as his own. This ability was uncanny as if he
placed his developers under a spell, an illusion that nothing was impossible.

I started reading it and could not put it down. I finished it in one evening. The great wisdom
of Steve Jobs. It really motivates you to do something great and shows that all goals can be
achieved if you believe in them and strong enough to have this faith in your heart in spite of
doubts of surroundings.
In this review I’ll share the main points and ideas, most impressive moments of this book, and
most memorable and motivating quotes.

Early Life

Jobs was born to Joanne Schieble (later Joanne Simpson) and Abdulfattah "John" Jandali, two
University of Wisconsin graduate students. The couple gave up their unnamed son for
adoption. Jobs’ father, Jandali, was a Syrian political science professor. His mother, Schieble,
worked as a speech therapist. Shortly after Jobs was placed for adoption, his biological
parents married and had another child, Mona Simpson. It was not until Jobs was 27 that he
was able to uncover information on his biological parents.

As an infant, Jobs was adopted by Clara and Paul Jobs and named Steven Paul Jobs. Clara
worked as an accountant and Paul was a Coast Guard veteran and machinist. Jobs’ father,
Jandali, was a Syrian political science professor. His mother, Schieble, worked as a speech
therapist. Shortly after Jobs was placed for adoption, his biological parents married and had
another child, Mona Simpson. It was not until Jobs was 27 that he was able to uncover
information on his biological parents.

As an infant, Jobs was adopted by Clara and Paul Jobs and named Steven Paul Jobs. Clara
worked as an accountant and Paul was a Coast Guard veteran and machinist.
obs was born on February 24, 1955, in San Francisco, California. He lived with his adoptive
family in Mountain View, California, within the area that would later become known as
Silicon Valley.

As a boy, Jobs and his father worked on electronics in the family garage. Paul showed his son
how to take apart and reconstruct electronics, a hobby that instilled confidence, tenacity and
mechanical prowess in young Jobs.
While Jobs was always an intelligent and innovative thinker, his youth was riddled with
frustrations over formal schooling. Jobs was a prankster in elementary school due to boredom,
and his fourth-grade teacher needed to bribe him to study. Jobs tested so well, however, that
administrators wanted to skip him ahead to high school — a proposal that his parents
declined.
After high school, Jobs enrolled at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. Lacking direction, he
dropped out of college after six months and spent the next 18 months dropping in on creative
classes at the school. Jobs later recounted how one course in calligraphy developed his love of
typography.

In 1974, Jobs took a position as a video game designer with Atari. Several months later he left
the company to find spiritual enlightenment in India, traveling further and experimenting with
psychedelic drugs.
Back when Jobs was enrolled at Homestead High School, he was introduced to his future
partner and co-founder of Apple Computer, Wozniak, who was attending the University of
California, Berkeley.

In a 2007 interview with PC World, Wozniak spoke about why he and Jobs clicked so well:
"We both loved electronics and the way we used to hook up digital chips," Wozniak said.
"Very few people, especially back then, had any idea what chips were, how they worked and
what they could do. I had designed many computers, so I was way ahead of him in electronics
and computer design, but we still had common interests. We both had pretty much sort of an
independent attitude about things in the world.”

Founding and Leaving Apple Computer

In 1976, when Jobs was just 21, he and Wozniak started Apple Computer in the Jobs’ family
garage. They funded their entrepreneurial venture by Jobs selling his Volkswagen bus and
Wozniak selling his beloved scientific calculator. Jobs and Wozniak are credited with
revolutionizing the computer industry with Apple by democratizing the technology and
making machines smaller, cheaper, intuitive and accessible to everyday consumers.
Wozniak conceived of a series of user-friendly personal computers, and — with Jobs in
charge of marketing — Apple initially marketed the computers for $666.66 each. The Apple I
earned the corporation around $774,000. Three years after the release of Apple's second
model, the Apple II, the company's sales increased by 700 percent to $139 million.
In 1980, Apple Computer became a publicly-traded company, with a market value of $1.2
billion by the end of its very first day of trading. Jobs looked to marketing expert John Sculley
of Pepsi-Cola to take over the role of CEO for Apple.

The next several products from Apple suffered significant design flaws, however, resulting in
recalls and consumer disappointment. IBM suddenly surpassed Apple in sales, and Apple had
to compete with an IBM/PC-dominated business world.

In 1984, Apple released the Macintosh, marketing the computer as a piece of a counterculture
lifestyle: romantic, youthful, creative. But despite positive sales and performance superior to
IBM's PCs, the Macintosh was still not IBM-compatible.

Sculley believed Jobs was hurting Apple, and the company's executives began to phase him
out. Not actually having had an official title with the company he co-founded, Jobs was
pushed into a more marginalized position and thus left Apple in 1985.

After leaving Apple in 1985, Jobs began a new hardware and software enterprise called
NeXT, Inc. The company floundered in its attempts to sell its specialized operating system to
mainstream America, and Apple eventually bought the company in 1996 for $429 million.

In 1997, Jobs returned to his post as Apple's CEO. Just as Jobs instigated Apple's success in
the 1970s, he is credited with revitalizing the company in the 1990s.

With a new management team, altered stock options and a self-imposed annual salary of $1 a
year, Jobs put Apple back on track. Jobs’ ingenious products (like the iMac), effective
branding campaigns and stylish designs caught the attention of consumers once again.

In the ensuing years, Apple introduced such revolutionary products as the Macbook Air, iPod
and iPhone, all of which dictated the evolution of technology. Almost immediately after
Apple released a new product, competitors scrambled to produce comparable technologies.
Apple's quarterly reports improved significantly in 2007: Stocks were worth $199.99 a share
—a record-breaking number at that time — and the company boasted a staggering $1.58
billion profit, an $18 billion surplus in the bank and zero debt.

In 2008, Apple became the second-biggest music retailer in America — second only to
Walmart, fueled by iTunes and iPod sales. Apple has also been ranked No. 1 on Fortune
magazine's list of "America's Most Admired Companies," as well as No. 1 among Fortune
500 companies for returns to shareholders.

Steve Jobs and Pixar

In 1986, Jobs purchased an animation company from George Lucas, which later became Pixar
Animation Studios. Believing in Pixar's potential, Jobs initially invested $50 million of his
own money in the company.

The studio went on to produce wildly popular movies such as Toy Story, Finding Nemo and
The Incredibles; Pixar's films have collectively netted $4 billion. The studio merged with
Walt Disney in 2006, making Jobs Disney's largest shareholder. In 2011, Forbes estimated the
majority of Jobs’ net worth at around $6.5 billion to $7 billion from his sale of Pixar to the
Walt Disney Company in 2006. However if Jobs had not sold his Apple shares in 1985, when
he left the company he founded and helmed for over a decade, his net worth would have been
a staggering $36 billion.

Wife and Children

Jobs and Laurene Powell married on March 18, 1991. The pair met in the early 1990s at
Stanford business school, where Powell was an MBA student. They lived together in Palo
Alto, California, with their three children: Reed, Erin, and Eve.

Jobs also fathered a daughter, Lisa, with girlfriend Chrisann Brennan in 1978, when he was
23. He denied paternity of his daughter in court documents, claiming he was sterile.
Lisa Brennan Jobs later wrote of her childhood and relationship with Jobs in her book Small
Fry, published in 2018. In 1980, Lisa wrote, DNA tests revealed that she and Jobs were a
match, and he was required to begin making paternity payments to her financially struggling
mother. Jobs did not initiate a relationship with his daughter until she was 7 years old. When
she was a teenager, Lisa came to live with her father.

Battle with Cancer

In 2003, Jobs discovered that he had a neuroendocrine tumor, a rare but operable form of
pancreatic cancer. Instead of immediately opting for surgery, Jobs chose to alter his pesco-
vegetarian diet while weighing Eastern treatment options.
For nine months, Jobs postponed surgery, making Apple's board of directors nervous.
Executives feared that shareholders would pull their stock if word got out that their CEO was
ill. But in the end, Jobs' confidentiality took precedence over shareholder disclosure.

In 2004, Jobs had successful surgery to remove the pancreatic tumor. True to form, in
subsequent years Jobs disclosed little about his health.
Early in 2009, reports circulated about Jobs' weight loss, some predicting his health issues had
returned, which included a liver transplant. Jobs responded to these concerns by stating he
was dealing with a hormone imbalance. Days later, he went on a six-month leave of absence.

In an email message to employees, Jobs said his "health-related issues are more complex"
than he thought, then named Tim Cook, Apple’s chief operating officer, as “responsible for
Apple's day-today operations."

After nearly a year out of the spotlight, Jobs delivered a keynote address at an invite-only
Apple event on September 9, 2009. He continued to serve as master of ceremonies, which
included the unveiling of the iPad, throughout much of 2010.

In January 2011, Jobs announced he was going on medical leave. In August, he resigned as
CEO of Apple, handing the reins to Cook.

Steve Jobs’ Death and Last Words

Jobs died in Palo Alto on October 5, 2011, after battling pancreatic cancer for nearly a decade.
He was 56 years old.

In a eulogy for Jobs, sister Mona Simpson wrote that just before dying, Jobs looked for a long
time at his sister, Patty, then his wife and children, then past them, and said his last words:
“OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.”

Best inspiring quotes and my conclusions

1. “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking
backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.”
When you are in the middle of a difficult situation, or you’re confused about your path, it’s
important to trust that eventually everything will connect.

2. “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.”

Be you! The world needs your unique strengths. Trying to be a clone of someone else, or to be
someone you are expected to be, won’t work. You are wonderfully made and have a purpose
only you can fulfill.

3. “Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.”
If your goal is to please everyone, you will always fall short; you will never make everyone
happy. Listening to everyone’s opinions about your life can be very discouraging and it’s
important to not let others’ judgments of your dreams and goals drown out your hope. Don’t
let your innermost spark, the passion that ignites you, die.

4. “Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what
you truly want to become.”
Have you ever said, “I’d love to do (fill in the blank) with my time, but…?” Work through the
“buts,” the fears, and the obstacles. Have the courage to follow your intuition.

5. “Stay hungry. Stay foolish.”

Push yourself. Stay eager to learn, take risks, and keep trying to do what others say can’t be
done.
6. “If today were the last day of your life, would you want to do what you are about to do
today?”
Jobs said he looked in the mirror every morning and asked himself that question, and
whenever the answer was “no” for many days in a row, he knew he needed to make a change.
Facing ourselves in the mirror and asking this question to ourselves can help us determine if
what we’re doing is truly important and whether your plans for the day actually line up with
your priorities.

7. “I think the things you regret most in life are the things you didn’t do.”
How many of us have jobs we hate? How many of us live our lives in misery because we’re
too scared to take risks? The greatest joy comes from living a life outside of our comfort
zones, where we live vulnerably and authentically. We are called not to live sheltered lives
but to boldly live our purpose.

8. “Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking
you have something to lose.”
Many of us spend our lives in discontent due to fear. Don’t live little. Remember your life is
brief; move past your fears and stand out.

9. “We’re here to put a dent in the universe. Otherwise why else even be here?”
There has never been another you, and there never will be another you. You have unique gifts
and talents that can change the world.

10. “Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and
get on with improving your other innovations.”
Be humble enough to admit when mistakes are made and move forward to your next idea.

11. “My favorite things in life don’t cost any money. It’s really clear that the most precious
resource we all have is time.”
We all have the same 24 hours in each day. Are you spending your time wisely?
12. “I’m convinced that about half of what separates successful entrepreneurs from the non-
successful ones is pure perseverance.”
Have you developed persistence, tenacity, and dedication?

13. “Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.”

The Encarta Dictionary defines innovation as a “new idea or method.” Are you generating
new ideas or methods? You have the choice to live your life stagnantly or as an innovator.
Which will you choose?

14. “I think if you do something and it turns out pretty good, then you should go do something
else wonderful, not dwell on it for too long. Just figure out what’s next.”
Keep progressing forward.

15. “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied
is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what
you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the
heart, you’ll know when you find it.”
If you feel unfulfilled in your career, keep looking until you find what you love to do.

You only live once. Make it count.

Conclusion
I think a hero is someone who is persistent, loves what he or she does and is kind to others.
Steve Jobs is my hero because he was persistent, a creator, and made the world a better place.
Steve Jobs has and is still touching the lives of people all around the world today. His story is
amazing to read because despite all of the hardships he faced, he did what he said he was
going to do: become a millionaire. He had a dream and he wouldn’t stop until it was lived out.
To summarize his life, one could say he was adopted at birth and the disappointment of his
parents giving him up followed him for the rest of his life. He dropped out of college after 6
months and he and a friend named Stephen Wozniak created the first Apple computer in a
garage. Apple blossomed into what is now known as one of the world’s greatest mule-national
corporations. Jobs was later fired from the company that he had founded and went away for
awhile to help turn a company named Pixar into a billion dollar corporation and found a new
company he called NeXT. When Apple started to struggle, he went back and took the
company to the top again, for the second time. One of the main focuses of his life was his
bitter personality and his work ethic. However, he always got the job done and most of his hot
headedness all was linked to his insecurities from his birth parents giving him up for adoption
as a small child. There was a reason Steve was the way he was but throughout his life, he
learned things the hard way and eventually turned his life around when he surrounded himself
with the right kind of people. Steve Jobs died on October 5, 2011 due to pancreatic cancer.