I have my own theory about why decline happens at companies like IBM or Microsoft. The company does a great job, innovates and becomes a monopoly or close to it in some field, and then the quality of the product becomes less important. The company starts valuing the great salesmen, because theyโre the ones who can move the needle on revenues, not the product engineers and designers. So the salespeople end up running the company.
Walter IsaacsonWe relate to Leonardo da Vinci because his genius was just being passionately curious about everything. He wanted to know everything he could know about our universe, including how we fit into it. We can't all have a superhuman intellect like Albert Einstein's, but we can be super-curious. And we can also quit smashing curiosity out of the hands our children.
Walter IsaacsonSteve has a reality distortion field.โ When Hertzfeld looked puzzled, Tribble elaborated. โIn his presence, reality is malleable. He can convince anyone of practically anything. It wears off when heโs not around, but it makes it hard to have realistic schedules.
Walter IsaacsonThe people who invented the twenty-first century were pot-smoking, sandal-wearing hippies from the West Coast like Steve, because they saw differently,โ he said. "The hierarchical systems of the East Coast, England, Germany, and Japan do not encourage this different thinking. The sixties produced an anarchic mind-set that is great for imagining a world not yet in existence.
Walter Isaacson