Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader
by Brent Schlender
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Co-authors speak live and in-depth plus audience Q&A
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Spoiler:
Sitting down for an in-depth talk and audience Q&A, the co-authors reflect on the difficulties of writing what they had intended to be “a business book.” For one, Apple didn’t agree to give interviews until after the book’s deadline. And Jobs himself had never liked to look backward, only forward. Bill Gates, who did grant them an interview, told them that he talks to a lot of entrepreneurs who want to be like Jobs, saying “a lot of them have the a-hole side down, it’s just the genius part that they’re missing.”
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Rick Tetzeli gives interview via video about Jobs’s evolution
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Mar, 2015
Spoiler:
Answering the question as to why they wrote another Jobs biography when Walter Isaacson had already done so, Rick Tetzeli responds that he and his co-author felt that nothing had yet been written that showed Jobs’s evolution as a businessperson. They discuss Jobs’s time at Pixar, and how his only interest in being written about in magazines was being featured on the cover holding the Apple device of the moment. Tetzeli says that what stood out about Jobs was an awareness, a wide vision, and a willingness to learn.
18:43
Co-author Rick Tetzeli gives interview via video call
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Spoiler:
Rick Tetzeli reflects on the challenges of writing the book, which he calls “an intimate perspective on the man that shows how he changed as a human over the course of time.” Addressing the topic of Jobs being a “good” or “bad” person, he says, “I think he was human,” adding that “he was unnecessarily rude to many people.” Tetzeli says Jobs did some terrible things, such as denying the paternity of his first daughter, but that “he also did some incredibly kind and generous things.”
22:37
Co-authors discuss Jobs’s complicated character
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Apr, 2015
Spoiler:
Sitting down for an in-depth interview with the IG UK channel, co-authors Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli answer questions about Jobs’s personality, downfalls, strengths, and legacy. They assert that he was “extremely effective” and that one of his strengths (prioritizing) caused him to discard things that weren’t priorities, with the downside that sometimes those discarded things were people. They say that to reduce such a discussion to whether he was “good” or “bad” is to revert to playground-level talk; he was much more complex than good/bad.
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Publications
The New York Times: Review: ‘Becoming Steve Jobs’ Focuses on Another Apple Era
Business Insider: How Steve Jobs became the greatest businessman the world has ever known
The New York Times: ‘Becoming Steve Jobs,’ by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli
The Independent: Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Rreckless Upstart Into a Visionary Leader by Brent Schlender & Rick Tetzeli, book review
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