Long before Steve Jobs was the unstoppable force of nature atop Apple, shipping hit product after hit product, he was practically run out of the company after a series of bad product and management decisions.
But as Geoffrey Cain argues in his new book, Steve Jobs in Exile: The Untold Story of NeXT and the Remaking of an American Visionary, the 12 years Jobs spent outside of Apple turned him into the leader the world came to know.
Cain joins the show to talk about Jobs' experiences at NeXT and Pixar, how Jobs learned to be a successful leader, and the true power — and danger — of the reality distortion field.
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0:00 Intro
0:29 90 Seconds on The Verge
2:18 Book intro: Steve Jobs in Exile
3:57 Interview begins — Jobs as "immature agent of chaos"
8:41 Could Jobs & Sculley have worked it out?
11:36 Jobs as a leader: great at hiring, terrible to work for
14:03 The NeXT story begins
22:31 Jobs' obsessive attention to detail at NeXT
25:55 The Pixar story
28:16 Was NeXT a timing mistake?
Counterfactuals
31:37 The IBM deal that could have changed everything
37:57 Jobs learning to "take a longer view"
40:52 Jobs returns to Apple
44:42 Outro & wrap-up
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