A Short Story Of Steve Wozniak (Woz)

Steve Wozniak allows anyone to use this photo for any purpose!

Steve Wozniak, shortly called as "Woz", is a computer engineer, famous for inventing the first Apple computers. Growing up in San Jose, California, he was inspired by his father's electronics job and took interest in re-assembling chips in electronic devices, recreating game characters in home television, all of which led him to win numerous awards in science fairs. During high school, he got to know Steve Jobs and owing to their common interests, they both developed an instant rapport and went on to work together in optimizing the circuit board for the game 'Breakout', an incident which is notorious for Jobs scamming Wozniak. He was also a notable prankster, one of which, 'Dial-A-Joke', made him meet Alice Robertson, whom he passionately pursued by joining the Freemasons, in which she had been a member. In 1971, due to insufficient money, Wozniak withdrew from his program at University of California, Berkley, however, he managed to acquire a job at Hewlett Packard (HP) where he enjoyed his work as a computer engineer.

  

During his job at HP, he got involved with Homebrew Computer club which inspired him to develop computers. This new found interest ultimately led to the creation of the first Apple computer, Apple 1, in 1976 and he sold them by starting the company 'Apple' along with Steve Jobs. But his biggest achievement came few years later - the creation of Apple 2 computers, which was much more sophisticated than its predecessor and which earned him millions in an extremely short time. Later, in his autobiographical book iWoz: From Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-Founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It , which he wrote to dispel the rumors concerning him, he clarified that Jobs had no role in the creation of Apple 2 computers. In 1981, a few weeks before his second marriage with Candice Clark, he got seriously injured from an airplane crash and suffered from traumatic memory loss for a while. Upon his recovery and subsequent marriage, he returned to University of California, Berkley under a pseudonym (because he was popular at that time) and resumed his undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science degree, while throwing rock-themed US festivals simultaneously, an endeavor which made him lose a considerable amount of his gathered wealth.

He graduated in 1986 and left Apple in 1987, citing that though there were no bitter feelings, he felt Apple had a negative influence to his creative knowledge. Since then, he either created or co-founded a series of companies such as CL-9, Wheels of Zeus, Acquicor Technology, pursuing his dream for innovation. Eventually, he settled for another passion of his - teaching school children, which he did for almost ten years, after divorcing his second wife, Candice. Currently, he is married to Janet Hill and lives in Los Gatos, California, receiving $120,000 stipend from Apple every year for owning few of its shares. In his autobiographical book, he had strongly asserted that he had a good relationship with Steve Jobs right until his death. Steve Wozniak has received numerous honorary doctorates, awards and was included into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. He does philanthropy through his 'Unite Us In Song' organization (http://archive.woz.org/unuson/) and has also appeared in TV shows and films, one of which was 'Jobs', the 2013 biographical film about Steve Jobs. Read more about Steve Jobs here:  https://businessideaslab.com/steve-jobs-biography-movie/

 More about Woz, you can find here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Wozniak

 

Have The Courage To Follow Your Dream. You Don't Need Permission

Follow your dreams! This is a very well known phrase, but there is something more about it. You need to have the courage to do that. Many people are simply afraid of failure or to be wrong, and this is one of the main reasons they don't live the life they would like to. Here is an article, I found recently on http://www.businessinsider.com, exactly about that. Do not wait or ask for a permission if you want to try something cool! You can just try it! The article is written by Dan Waldschmid, more about its source you can read below.

Do not wait or ask for a permission if you want to try something cool!

Sometimes everybody around you is wrong. Frightfully, horrifically mistaken That’s important to remember. One of the things business experts tell you when you are considering changes to your sales strategy is the idea that you need to “listen to your marketplace”. That you need to take your idea and run it by the people around you to get some feedback.

These same experts will remind you that you need to “give your industry what they want."  Telling you that giving your industry what they want you will grow your company more quickly than anyone around you. More sales. More effective marketing.

But there are a lot of problems with that line of thinking.

Most of the time people don’t know what they want. Business people. People who are husbands and wives. People who are athletes, politicians, and industry titans. They don’t know exactly what they want.

Big picture — they know what they want; but when it comes to the details, the exact way things are executed, there’s a lot of uncertainty. A lot still to be tried.

    If you give people what they want, you are usually only giving them what they think they want. Which is likely to change tomorrow and the day after and the day after that too.

More importantly, sometimes people are wrong.

Two hundred years ago southern businessmen thought that slavery was the best business strategy to drive economic gain. It was “what they wanted."  Besides the catastrophic personal impact on the slaves themselves, that line of thinking crippled the long term economic growth of the entire region.

Because slavery uniquely relied on unrealistically inexpensive labor, southern businesses were much slower to innovate than their northern counterparts. If you were to ask a southern business leader what he wanted, he would give you religious and economic plausibility for more slaves.

And that very strategy was morally and economically flawed.

You don’t get bonus points for being abrasive, abusive, or obnoxious. And you don’t usually “win” by running around telling people how wrong they are. That doesn’t work.

Just remember that what people want isn’t always what’s best for them or for everyone else around them. Sometimes what they want turns out to be a horrific human tragedy.  Along the way, you’ll hear all the reasons why what they want is right, but that doesn’t mean you need to be the person who gives it to them.

Instead, blaze a new trail. Think about where you want to lead your market. Your industry. The people around you. Think about where you want to go and then lead. Shepherd. Protect your vision.

Martin Luther didn’t ask for anyone else’s opinions when he nailed his religious thesis on the door of All Saint’s Church in 1517 and began a religious reformation that is felt all over the world to this day. Five hundred years later, Steve Jobs never asked you what you wanted in a better phone when he announced the first iPhone on June 29, 2007. They didn’t care about “what you wanted."

They didn’t ask permission. They lead with purpose. And passion.

And we all followed.

Because that’s what we do when people take us to where we want to be. Not just lead us where we think we want to go.

It’s something to think about the next time you feel like you need permission to try something awesome. Just do it.

I think this is a good advice, isn't it? As one of the very famous men in business - Steve Jobs one said on a commencement speech in Stanford - 'Have the courage to follow your dreams!' (Listen to his famous speech here: http://businessideaslab.com/steve-jobs-speech-standford/). I hope you enjoyed this article.

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-reinvent-a-business-strategy-2013-5

Share this article, if you like it!