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Steve Jobs and the Silicon Valley Spirit - 25th October 2008
Passion, Creativity and the Entrepreneurial Drive

Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before finally leaving. He believed he had enrolled in a college that was expensive and all his working-class parents' savings were being spent on his college tuition. He didn't see the value in it. He had no idea what he did want to do with his life but he did start dropping in on classes that looked interesting.
To make ends meet he slept on the floor in friends' rooms, returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and he walked the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. Much of what he stumbled into following his curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. He had noticed that all over the college campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Since he had dropped out and didn't have to take the scheduled classes, he decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. He found it beautiful, historical and, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture. There seemed to be no practical application of this in his life.
But ten years later, when designing the first Macintosh computer, they designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If he had never dropped in on that course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. Windows followed the Mac and so today we all can enjoy the experience of calligraphy in our computers.
Steve Jobs believes you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. He says, you have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let him down, and it has made all the difference in his life. He considers himself lucky to have found what he loved to do so early in life.

Apple was started in his parent’s garage when he was 20. He and his partner worked hard, and in 10 years Apple grew from just the two of them in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. They had released their finest creation - the Macintosh - a year earlier, and he had just turned 30. As Apple grew he hired someone who was very talented to run the company with him. As their visions of the future diverged they had a falling out. The Board of Directors went against him and so at 30 he was out. He felt like a failure, and even thought about leaving the valley. But then he realized he was still in love with what he did and decided to start over.
Being out of Apple, the pressures of success were replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again. It freed him to enter one of the most creative periods of his life. In the next five years, he started a company called NeXT, another called, Pixar, fell in love and got married.
Pixar created the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story. Amazingly Apple bought NeXT, and he retuned to Apple!

Work fills a great part of our lives and Steve Jobs believes the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe to be great work. The only way you can do great work is to love what you do. Keep looking until you find what you love in work and in a life partner. That seems to sum up the passion that has driven Steve Jobs to create such innovative and life changing products from the Apple iMac to iPod and iPhone. Each time he captures our imagination anew as to what is possible for the future. What appears to be a recipe to remain hungry and foolish may indeed be the thirst for success that stimulates creativity that drives the entrepreneurial spirit.