iCon: Steve Jobs

The subtitle of the book bills Steve Jobs as "the greatest second act in the history of business," referring to his triumphant return to Apple a decade after being ousted from the company he co-founded. That may be hyperbole, but his story definitely is an amazing one. A brash, obnoxious, staggeringly egotistical fellow with no computing or engineering expertise builds a reputation as a technology guru based on an entirely different skill set: presentation skills, negotiation skills and ruthless manipulation of people. Sometimes the recipe for success in a given field is not what you would expect.

The authors take us through Steve Jobs' life and career, but do not try to draw larger lessons. How can a man with no technical expertise become a technology leader? Steve Wozniak's family saw no reason why a nervy kid like Jobs with nothing tangible to offer should be a full partner in Apple. When Woz was no longer vital to the business, Jobs froze him out.

This book is not an anti-Jobs polemic, but it casts him in an unattractive light: egotistical, tyrannical, selfish, uncaring, cheap, manipulative, disloyal and duplicitous, for starters. He has a devoted following, yet has traits more appropriate to lists of the worst bosses. The reasons need to be probed, but are not.

A fascinating stretch of the book involves the years after Jobs was exiled from Apple. His new company, NeXT, was a flop yet, incredibly, its development of a technology vital to a struggling Apple became the key to Jobs' return. Then he purged the executives who brought him back.

What later became Pixar originally belonged to George Lucas, and Jobs drove a hard bargain to get it on the cheap when Lucas needed cash for a huge divorce settlement. It proved to be a smashing success, and made Jobs unexpectedly a Hollywood mogul. But Jobs fired its leading talent over a petty matter, and wrote the man out of the company's official history.

The discussions of corporate politics are fascinating. Steve Jobs must dominate, and cannot stand being challenged by strong people. This affects his choice of executive talent, probably to the detriment of his companies. Likewise, the shenanigans of big egos at Disney like Eisner, Katzenberg and Ovitz, as told in the book, beggar belief. During their struggles, Eisner openly began wishing for Pixar to produce flops, just to take Jobs down a peg. Never mind that Disney had a huge financial interest in the success of Pixar films.