PHOTOS, PAGE 1

       Editor and prime reporter is Doug Terry, a veteran television and radio reporter in   Washington, DC, (details below)

The Thirteen Most Important Lessons from the Life of Steve Job for business and for everyday life.

1. When you have a good idea, don’t give up on it. Don’t let other people  try to turn you away from it or dilute it. Stick with it. Other people will always try to change your idea into their own. Use only the best ideas that fit within the overall concept.

2. Design matters. People respond to be beautiful things. It is part of  human nature. We are surrounded with incredibly beautiful things in  nature and our brains and eyes are trained to look for beauty in everything we see. When we don’t find it, we are unconsciously disappointed.

3. Pursing profits over excellence ultimately leads to disaster. Going for something better can cause short term pain and long term gain. Making profits with inferior goods is self defeating, even though most American business these days is headed in that direction or already there.
 

4. Make something that can be used and understood by people, not just  engineers. Engineers live in their own world and they want to keep it  that way. They make products to impress themselves and their friends. They are much more interested in the complications of getting something to work than they are actually using it or helping others to use it. While the  computer world rests on their work, it is important to take their work  away from them (at some point) and tune it for use by ordinary people.
 

5. “Insanely great” might, in a short time, be only good enough. The world keeps moving. Always innovate. Every time a new technology, like CD-ROMs, came along, Apply sought to be the first with the best. It was always pushing for better, not just including the innovation in its products.
 

6. Advantage doesn’t necessarily always come to the first with a new product or design. (see: iPod (digital music players), iPad (tablets), iPhone (smart phones. All of these devices were available by other companies, but Apple made products so much better, and thoroughly integrated, that the other products became afterthoughts.
 

7. Live your life the way you want to live, as best you can.
 

8. Don’t let budget committees or budget cutters run your company. They don’t know how. All they really know how to do is control costs, which they mistake as being the most important aspect of running a business.
 

9. Leverage your advantages. Jobs could make dramatic presentations of new products and his role as co-founder of Apple gave him star power. Anyone else would have been just a guy up on the stage selling something. He used his advantages for maximum gain for himself and the company. Those “show and tells” cemented his public image as an innovator.
 

10. Don’t let riches go to your head. Stay with your core mission and  core values for as long as they continue to make sense in your life. After the first 10 million, or 100 million, more money is basically useless. Jobs continued to live in a modest house and made deep friendships with people who interested him.
 

11. Staying power, longevity, could be the most important part of having an impact on your company and the world. A quick flash of brilliance is not nearly so meaningful as a long slog of work and applied intelligence.
 

12. Bring others onboard who can compliment and expand your vision. Without them, you will hit a dead end street far too soon.
 

13. Enjoy your life and what you are.

Doug Terry, 10.26.11

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