In the summer of 2004, Walter Isaacson got a phone call from Steve Jobs.
A New York Times bestselling author, Mr. Isaacson had recently published “Benjamin Franklin: An American Life” and had just finished “Einstein: His Life and Universe.” The Apple founder wanted Mr. Isaacson to write about him next.
Mr. Isaacson said he was initially reluctant to accept.
“I didn’t realize then that [Jobs] had just been diagnosed with cancer— his wife later told me he called me right after the diagnosis,” said Mr. Isaacson. “He had a great sense of history and I think he realized that if he was going to fight this disease, he wanted people to understand his role in history and what Apple had done in history.”
Mr. Isaacson shared what he learned about Mr. Jobs and why he writes biographies at a keynote address in Jack Morton Auditorium Monday and on the Kalb Report Tuesday.
Mr. Isaacson’s Monday keynote was part of the inaugural Aspen Undergraduate Business Education Consortium, a two-day event designed to better integrate liberal learning into undergraduate business education and hosted by George Washington’s School of Business. Mr. Isaacson serves as president and CEO of the Aspen Institute, a nonpartisan educational and policy studies institute based in Washington.
In his introductory remarks at the event, President Steven Knapp said it was “truly an honor” to host Mr. Isaacson and to welcome him back to campus. As chairman and CEO of CNN from 2001 to 2003, Mr. Isaacson spent time in Jack Morton Auditorium, where CNN’s Crossfire was taped. Dr. Knapp also noted that Teach for America, where Mr. Isaacson serves as board chairman, has been the largest employer of newly graduated GW students in the last four years.
Mr. Isaacson said that by the time he decided to go ahead with Mr. Jobs’ biography, he realized Mr. Jobs had transformed six industries, including computing, music consumption, telecommunications, publishing, digital animation and retail.
Mr. Isaacson said Apple’s blend of business, technology and the humanities was the “secret sauce” to Apple. It was what made Steve Jobs great and what made Apple “the most valuable company on Earth.”
Mr. Isaacson recalls Mr. Jobs himself saying that Apple “had the humanities in our genetic code.”
“That’s what set us apart,” said Mr. Jobs.
Acknowledging that Mr. Jobs had a reputation for being difficult, Mr. Isaacson said that should not be the only takeaway from his book, currently No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list.
“Some people read the book and say, wow, he was pretty tough as a character, he’s kinda a jerk,” said Mr. Isaacson. “There’s a whole lot of jerks in this world…but what set Steve apart was he was able to tie the passion and the emotionalism that you saw in his personal life with a desire to make great products.”
This passion was one of the first lessons Mr. Isaacson said he learned from Mr. Jobs, who was focused on making the perfect product first, and trusted that revenue and profits would follow.
Mr. Jobs told Mr. Isaacson about a lesson he learned from his adopted father when he was seven years old. While they were painting a fence, Mr. Jobs asked his father why the back of the fence had to look as good as the front, saying that no would ever know. His father told Mr. Jobs, “but you will know.” This message shaped much of Mr. Jobs’ approach to his own work, including his stints at Atari, NeXT Computer, Pixar and, of course, Apple.
One example of Mr. Jobs’ perfectionism surfaced during the creation of the Macintosh in the 1980s. Right before the personal computer was to be shipped out, Mr. Jobs decided that the circuit board needed to be redesigned to be more attractive, even though consumers would never see it, telling the 32 engineers that they “will know.” Once the circuit board was finished, he had the engineers sign their names, reminding them that “real artists signed their work.”
“It was that passion for perfection that drove people nuts but it also drove them to do things that they never dreamed were possible,” said Mr. Isaacson.
Mr. Isaacson said Mr. Jobs’ ability to convince people to complete “impossible tasks” was called his “reality distortion field,” a term created at Apple in the 1980s. Mr. Isaacson recalled a meeting between Mr. Jobs and Wendell Weeks, the president and CEO of the glass company Corning Incorporated, where Mr. Jobs convinced the company to manufacture a unique kind of smooth but indestructible glass for Apple products in just nine months. That glass is still used on Apple products, including iPods and iPads.
Mr. Isaacson said Mr. Jobs also believed products should be kept simple, a belief Mr. Isaacson said came from Mr. Jobs’ time in India in the 1970s, where he studied Buddhism.
Mr. Isaacson said Mr. Jobs believed simplicity was not about stripping things away but understanding the “real essence of the product.”
When creating the iPod in 2000, Mr. Jobs insisted that users be able to get to songs in only three clicks. Mr. Jobs also removed the on/off switch, and instead wanted the product to power on and off of its own accord.
“Everything about him was the ability to think a little differently,” said Mr. Isaacson, “as he …combined design, simplicity and beauty with business and engineering.”
Mr. Isaacson said Mr. Jobs’ interest in the humanities—a calligraphy course Mr. Jobs audited in the 1970s led to the development of different fonts for the Macintosh—inspired him to think creatively about products.
“He always felt that if you were driven not only by profits but by poetry, you’d be willing to try things differently…to think out of the box,” said Mr. Isaacson. Think Differently became one of Apple’s mantras when Mr. Jobs returned to the company in the 1990s.
In a conversation shortly before Mr. Jobs’ death in October 2011, Mr. Isaacson asked Mr. Jobs if he believed in God. Mr. Jobs replied that he’d like to believe that there’s something more to the world, but that sometimes he worried that maybe death was the end—just like the on/off switch.
“Then he gave me that half smile,” said Mr. Isaacson, “and said, ‘I guess that’s why I never liked putting on/off switches on Apple devices.’”
At the Kalb Report, taped at the National Press Club, Mr. Isaacson spoke with Marvin Kalb, the James Clark Welling presidential fellow, about Mr. Jobs and the role of technology in journalism, as well as his own careers in television, nonprofits and writing.
Mr. Isaacson told students in the audience that journalism will remain “the most glorious, exciting, wonderful and magical trade that you can be in.”
“Your curiosity is piqued, you get to ask the questions, you get to write about it and share and gather information,” he said. “It is awesome.”
“This is an exciting time to go into journalism now,” he added, “because there are so many new ways to do it.”
The Kalb Report series is produced by the GW Global Media Institute, The National Press Club and Harvard’s Shorenstein Center. It is underwritten by a grant from the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation.