Steve Jobs Remembered by Larry Ellison and Pixar's Ed Catmull

Edie what what when you think about Steve's career and and you work with him so closely at Pixar why was he so successful well I'd have to say it over the time that I knew Steve was just 26 years I was just as he was forced out of Apple that he went through it safes some very distinct phases and in the first phase is whether he had a sort of a reputation I think people misunderstood him and what he was doing but what I I found over the time was that he was learning from those mistakes but the Steve for the last several years that I knew was very he was very kind he was very empathetic with people and when he negotiated is asan do with Disney there was a notion of fairness and partnership which is very strong and and those things weren't there earlier but he was so smart that he learned how to do it when you test the boundaries which some people do and he was a person that did test the boundaries when you do that what do you do with it or let's take something which you you hear a lot about it is people CEOs would say my employees are my most valuable asset and the culture is extremely important but with Steve he built a building and the building I think is one of the most extraordinary work environments I've ever seen yeah I'm at the Pixar Pixar building and this was Steve's design and it was very cultural and it was because he thought about what it meant to say that your people are the best and the culture was the best and it translated into an environment that was unlike what other CEOs would do who would use the same words he had a single mindedness and an attention to detail unlike anyone I've ever seen and if you look at his he insisted on he was a bit of a control freak you know he was a little bit just a little bit and he wanted to engineer every aspect of the user experience let's say for the iPhone every excruciating detail he was personally involved in I don't think people really understand Edison had this comment you know it's it's 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration Steve was a god of perspiration I mean Steve worked incredibly hard it wasn't just his intellectual gifts which were enormous but how he took that horsepower and applied it tirelessly until the entire problem was solved I've never seen anyone like that but was there something different about his ability to focus or it was that this control freak thing or what well I'll tell you look let's talk a little bit about Pixar you know and Steve's my best friend Rebecca you know 25 years or they renew him for about the same same like the time very interesting how we met we were neighbors in Woodside his peacock wandered onto my property and woke me up not the way to start a relationship enterprise his girlfriend had given him a peacock and I came over to complain about the peacock said you don't like that bird either it's not that he just put in the era if you had to stay up all night if he's at night after night over tonight I would get he would call me up is it Larry let's get together we saw each other a lot I draw you come over to my house I do go over to his house assessee I'm not coming over if you make me watch Toy Story again I've watched 73 different versions of Toy Story now I know the new version of render man is four percent better than the one I saw last week but I'm not watching this thing again so Larry good to see you you won't believe the shout the different two shadows look but that was Steve until it was perfect and then once it was perfect and then he moved on to the next problem but working working obsessively until he had a solution that was insanely great is what Steve was all about ideas good idea a lot of good ideas there a lot of good ideas there are a lot of good ideas translating a good idea into a great product is unbelievably hard but Steve would translate good ideas not always his good ideas but he would translate good ideas into finished product unlike anyone in our industry you'd have to Henry Ford didn't invent the car but he made it cheap and he made it popular and he made it accessible to the American people Steve would translate good ideas into finished brilliant products and it's a thing I think that people don't understand about Steve is that Steve was a master storyteller a storyteller he was a storyteller and a good storyteller is working on one who makes up stories he's working on the components of it and they'll try something new and they commit to it so Steve would come up with an idea and he would commit to it and he would roll it out to people and for some people that commitment would say whoa he's just the great steve has spoken but in fact when he wanted was the push back so people argue back with him and if it didn't work he'd go back and redo it first I knew his heart intellectually was in Apple I was clear all along there was something about that or he self-identified with but he appreciated the passion there but he was he was so brilliant he knew the difference he knew when he needed to be in it because that was him and he knew when he needed to support us and because he knew the difference he could succeed in both fronts which were very different from each other it talked about him as a storyteller do you think that applied at an apple well I'd like to emphasize you know one of the things that just said which was you know Steve did want to debate things I mean Steve didn't think it was important what there was his idea or someone else's idea as well as long was the best idea Steve was definitely one of those people were the best idea one now he had a you know you had he's very smart guy and you had to be able to persuade him but he would listen if he thinks someone's better than he is and is in a certain area he'll I mean he's very good at listening if he thinks you're full of it he'll tell you in a phenomenal to watch me because he really would flip and you just saw this and he would argue something and you had to have the force ago but he wanted somebody to argue back yeah he didn't respect somebody if they didn't have a point of view and and and push it hard he was a very inspirational charismatic leader that people believed in they wanted to be on his team because his team was doing very important things I think the Macintosh which was so clearly far superior to what Windows was didn't win because those other elements weren't there and when I say Steve learned because he had that genius I I agree there but he learned those other skills so by the time he got back to Apple he was able to take the superior product and basically blow it forward because he was no longer weak in those other areas ya know I think I think he lost his job probably because he didn't negotiate with the board well enough I mean so so I I agree that he made himself vulnerable because he relied so much on what he did and how brilliantly he did it that he expected the Apple board to recognize that that he was kind of a civil what how would you advise someone who wanted to model the Steve Jobs career or the Steve Jobs method or the Steve Jobs success is basically what they want to model what would you tell him to do well I mean it could be people in this room it could be people who will watch this video yeah I mean to me trying to copy Steve means they're going to stop at the surface I think conceptually copying Steve Emily is the wrong thing to do partly because some people are so unique that to copy them is only to Perry to them in some ways in a way that doesn't work and and he truly was unique and she try to be like him what does that mean I do think there are principles for how you think about things how you explore the boundaries how you keep yourself and getting caught up in in a conservative way of thinking and the way you you you keep yourself from being blind from things Steve had the facility to do that most people don't and that they can work on their their personal view of life and how they tackle problems and how they open themselves themselves out they'll have a greater result well I think you know I think you can't cannot copy Steve I think you can ask yourself some basic questions of you're like him I mean if there's an unsolved problem and you're at work can you think about anything else if you want to know you're like Steve job is very simple you are unable to think about anything about the these serious problems that work on you just that's all you can do and you obsess about it until you solve it and then you move on to the next thing and you assess about that until you solve it and then you obsess about this until you solve it it is you know that obsessive compulsive personality combined with this incredibly and obsessive compulsive personalities are not all that rare among successful people the excessive compulsive personality combined with this peculiar genius of Steve's which was both aesthetic you know we talked about the building he loved architecture and design you know he loved I mean I mean he was an amateur architect he loved product design was it an engineer though he wasn't a code he wasn't he wasn't a programmer you know and I you know I'm a programmer and and but he had enough knowledge of of what went into you know you know what went into the into the product whether it was the microprocessor or the operating system he had a pretty deep knowledge about all of that technology very smart boy he learned very fast might have not might not have been a professional programmer but his understanding of the complete system the gestalt the whole thing the whole system and how to fit those pieces together if you have that kind of obsession combined combined with Picasso's aesthetic and Edison's inventiveness then you were the next Steve Jobs so that's the test easy this thing easy you know I mean this guy's not you know you know I when I you there really are no lessons to take from it unless oh no take that little test in you and you match you know III don't know III think I I think there are there are a lot of a lot of lessons but you know to say to try to model yourself after after after Steve Jobs I mean again it would be like well okay what do I'd like to paint like Picasa what should I do should I use more red great see Apple became the most valuable company on earth and it wasn't even one of Steve's goals he never you know it he wasn't trying to be rich he wasn't trying to be famous he wasn't trying to be powerful he was obsessed with the creative process and building something that was beautiful

Channel: Wall Street Journal

Views: 236,813

Rating: 4.9086294 out of 5

Keywords: ipad, imac, mac, Macintosh, Apple computers, Walt Mossberg, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Steve Jobs memorial, Stave Jobs AllThingsD, Steve Jobs All Things Digital, Steve Jobs Apple, Steve Jobs Pixar, Apple Inc, Apple, Ipod, Iphone, Ipod Touch, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, Mark Zuckerberg, Edwin Catmull, Larry Ellison, Pixar Animation, Oracle

Id: j-Yk4k2tG4A

Length: 12min 23sec (743 seconds)

Published: Thu May 31 2012