I was at the Business Insider Silicon Alley 100 event last night when news of Steve Jobs’s death hushed the room. People began to whip out their Macs and iPhones and stared at the news in disbelief while the glow of the very devices that Steve Jobs created washed over them. After the initial shock, the conversation quickly turned to the impact he made on the world and on individual lives.
Right now, with all the economic despair in the air, the European debt crisis gyrating daily, and Wall Street being occupied by the unemployed, it’s natural to feel paralyzed and out of control. And it’s easy to look at the loss of a leader like Steve Jobs and think that this really is the end of days for innovation in America. What’s next?
I suspect that Steve Jobs would say that “you’re next.” Get into the driver’s seat. Steve Jobs never put his career into someone else’s hands, he owned it. In fact, he was a control freak over it. But he got to do what he wanted to do when he wanted to do it — all while permanently changing the world. He never was beholden to “the Man” because he knew he was his own man. And that’s why he was able to identify white space and exploit the bandwidth of his mind in such an inventive way.
We live in a crazy, chaotic time of disruption – one that Steve Jobs helped accelerate in 1984. He’s gone, but I think he’d want us to keep inventing and living up to our fullest potential, don’t you?
Here’s what Jobs had to say on that very topic in his often-quoted 2005 commencement speech at Stanford University:
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
So when you’re feeling out of sorts, go back and listen to Steve’s words. Then pick up the baton. And chart your own course.
[Image: Jonathan Mak]
