“iCon Steve Jobs: The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business,” by Jeffrey S. Young and William L. Simon (John Wiley & Sons, 368 pages, $24.95)
True to his prediction, Apple Chief Executive and co-founder Steve Jobs returned to work a little more than a month after his surgery for pancreatic cancer in August 2004.
Jeffrey S. Young and William L. Simon, co-authors of “iCon Steve Jobs: The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business,” describe the recuperating Jobs as exuding enthusiasm and being closed-mouthed about the ordeal.
“The reason for Steve’s returning to work so quickly after surgery became clear in a few months: Apple was building a collection of new products that was designed to play off the success of the iPod, chasing after an outlandish Stevian dream: to take back the computer business from Microsoft.”
He’s going to take Gates
Reflecting on Jobs’ achievements, the authors point out that 11 years after being forced out of Apple, Jobs returned and rescued it from a downward spiral, led Pixar to produce a string of animated movies that captivated parents and children, and revitalized the music industry and catapulted it into a digital future.
“Yet there’s one more battle he wants to win. It has nothing to do with money, fame, or glory. Like all the best fights, this one is personal. Steve Jobs is going to best Bill Gates. This fight is Shakespearean, elemental, and emotional; watching it unfold should be the most fascinating business story of this young millennium,” Young and Simon write.
Captivating biography
That prediction comes at the conclusion of one of the most captivating business biographies of recent years. Young and Simon have done a masterful job updating, fleshing out and generally surpassing Young’s own previous Jobs biography, “Steve Jobs: The Journey Is the Reward,” and Alan Deutschman’s “The Second Coming of Steve Jobs.”
The suggestion that Jobs is out to outdo Bill Gates is not idle speculation. It flows inevitably out of the thoroughly researched and carefully constructed narrative. The Jobs offered by Young and Simon could not do otherwise.
That assessment, however, does not mean that Young and Simon admire Jobs. On the contrary, “iCon” is a warts-and-all tale. Throughout, the warts predominate. Jobs comes across as a quirky, petty, arrogant, untrustworthy and mean-spirited tyrant driven by an unquenchable thirst for success and recognition.
But he also emerges as a character of heroic dimensions with the charisma to lead others to extraordinary feats of creativity, an uncanny vision of the future of business and technology, and dogged determination as a negotiator.
The first part of the book retraces familiar ground: Jobs’ abbreviated education, early fascination with electrical engineering, dabbling in Eastern religions, journey to India, friendship and partnership with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, their early successes, Jobs’ betrayal of Wozniak and the breach that resulted, Apple’s evolution into a major computer company and Jobs’ forced exit.
Act II details Jobs’ struggles to make his new company, NeXT, succeed, his dealings with Ross Perot, Jobs’ acquisition of Pixar, Pixar’s phenomenal successes (“Toy Story,” “A Bug’s Life,” “Monsters, Inc.,” “Finding Nemo,” “The Incredibles,” “Toy Story 2”), the Pixar public offering that secured Jobs’ fortune and his triumphal return to Apple as CEO.
Young and Simon’s accounts of the Byzantine machinations that preceded Jobs’ return show him at both his best and worst – the astute businessman, visionary and charmer along with the cunning, deceitful manipulator with a double standard for loyalty, willing to blame others for his own failures and take credit for others’ accomplishments.
Act III relates Jobs’ success as a Hollywood mogul; his expansion into the music business with iPod, iTunes and Apple’s Music Store; and his titanic struggle with Disney’s Michael Eisner.
Of Jobs’ involvement in the music industry, Young and Simon write: “He had achieved the truly extraordinary, taking on one of the most entrenched my-way-or-the-highway’ industries in the United States, and actually reshaping it, bending it to his will. He came along at a time when the industry was in a spiral of shrinking revenues, downsizing work forces and the threat of extinction from an apparently unstoppable force called downloading. An outsider and not even a fan of today’s music, Steve had done the almost unthinkable; he had changed the face of a second industry.”
The authors point out that Bill Gates and Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer are also now eyeing possibilities in the entertainment field. But Young and Simon write that the consumer market differs fundamentally from the business market.
“Microsoft, even with Gates’s billions, may well be outclassed, outgunned, and outmaneuvered by Steve Jobs,” they write.
The book details the protracted, bitter negotiations between Jobs and Eisner, both ego-driven antagonists, and the external and internal forces assailing the world of Mickey Mouse at the time.
“In the end, Steve won a crucial battle. Eisner will step down year earlier than planned, and new CEO Bob Iger will have a better chance of getting the Pixar-Disney relationship back on track. Meanwhile, Pixar has enough money in the bank to fund its next several productions – without Disney. Whatever happens in the future, it will be Steve Jobs who makes the call.”
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(c) 2005, Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
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Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
AP-NY-06-16-05 0621EDT
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