Why most people don't get Steve Jobs

His saga is the entrepreneurial creation myth writ large: Steve Jobs co-founded Apple in his parents garage in 1976, was ousted in 1985, returned to rescue it from near bankruptcy in 1997 and by the time he died, in October 2011, had built it into the world's most valuable company.

Along the way he helped to transform seven industries: personal computing, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, retail stores and digital publishing. He thus belongs in the pantheon of great US innovators, along with Thomas Edison, Henry Ford and Walt Disney. None of these men was a saint, but long after their personalities are forgotten, history remembers how they applied imagination to technology and business.

Biographer Walter Isaacson identified 13 aspects of Steve Jobs modus operandi and CSNZ will present each of these as a series in upcoming News Briefs.

Instalment one is on Focus:

When Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, the company was producing a random array of computers and peripherals, including a dozen different versions of the Macintosh. After a few weeks of product review sessions, he'd finally had enough ... READ MORE

Released by the Australian Financial Review - 7 June 2012