Finding the Next Steve Jobs: How to Find, Keep, and Nurture Talent

I work (probably not for long!) for a company synonymous with high-tech creativity. Nolan Bushnell's spellbinding book corroborated my suspicions about what's wrong with their corporate culture, and why they are successful instead of being hyper-successful. I was mystified by why they love what I call my little ideas but not my big ones that could change the world and make them more valuable than Apple, Microsoft, and Google combined. The answer? Fear of being wrong. If my company nixed Henry Ford's big idea as they did one of mine, we'd still be riding horses and bicycles.They claim to embrace big ideas but instead reject them. A salient characteristic of big ideas is that they initially sound brash if not nutty. Imagine if a young Thomas Edison told them, "I have an idea for putting a carbonized bamboo filament in a bulb that will create a demand for a distribution system to bring electricity into every home and business. Yes, electricity is dangerous, but it will make the world a better place. Really."My employer asks me to think of solutions to all sorts of problems. One request initially seemed so mundane that I decided to let it percolate in my brain by building a shed (readers of this book will know why that's important). Somewhere between the first nail and the last coat of paint, an idea popped into my head that met their request but also solved one of the biggest problems in the world today: a problem that seems unsolvable. My first prototype worked and subsequent ones were even better. Not only did it work marvelously, but it was easy to PROVE that it worked. It could be quickly produced for a low cost and there is nothing else like it, thus permitting substantial profits without plundering customers.The upshot of this story is that even companies who say they want big ideas are more comfortable digesting smaller incremental ones that temporarily give them a competitive advantage instead of introducing game-changing technology.This meshes with research indicating that very innovative ideas often elicit strongly negative reactions. People claim they like truly creative ideas until they actually meet one. New ideas can evoke feelings of uncertainty that makes them uncomfortable. To mitigate that fear, they retreat for the comfort of old ideas or minor tweaks of them. However, rejecting the idea often isn't enough. As I discussed in a blog article ("Ridiculing good new ideas"), innovative people and ideas are often hammered for years or even decades until others belatedly realize the innovation's merit.Buttressing that close-mindedness is an unfortunately prevalent psychological process called "system justification" that motivates people to defend the status quo even when the status quo is screwing them. System justification is basically the secret sauce of sheeple that turns men into mice. If the cheese ain't yellow-orange, they ain't biting. If the cheese clogs their arteries, clogged arteries are good. Ya dig?Readers who read between the lines will realize that Bushnell's book could help them discover not only creative talent but also leaders innovative enough to conceive of solutions to the myriad problems that plague us. However, system justification prevents them from embracing anyone who truly thinks differently or is less than perfect, notwithstanding the observations of Abraham Lincoln ("It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.") and Friedrich Nietzsche ("In heaven all the interesting people are missing.").H. L. Mencken echoed a similar comment: "The great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable. No virtuous man--that is, virtuous in the YMCA sense--has ever painted a picture worth looking at, or written a symphony worth hearing, or a book worth reading."Or invented something truly remarkable, I might add. There's a reason for this. Researchers found that prenatal exposure to higher levels of testosterone makes people more likely to be eminently gifted with extreme creativity but it can also make men more likely to act like men, not angels. If Ben Franklin and Albert Einstein were judged by today's "one strike and you're out" standards, they would be massacred.Bushnell made so many great points that I could write a book about them. Here's one: In discussing clones, he mentioned how diversity is reflexively equated with superficial things such as gender or ethnicity, not creative diversity. Thanks to the Internet, I've made friends around the world: every continent and nations from Haiti to ones even smaller. Our common denominator is that we like ideas. We're thinkers. Skin color is utterly irrelevant. Why on Earth should human resources departments care about race or other differences Bushnell mentioned? To meet some quota? Because it requires less mental horsepower to process?Readers should heed Bushnell's advice to "debate both sides of any proposition." I've done that for years on my blog, with some readers concluding I'm über-liberal and others thinking I am further Right than Attila the Hun, sometimes on the same issue. Neither, but long ago I realized the mental exercise I could obtain by taking extreme but disparate opinions. Incidentally, that tactic led to personal attacks on me that, while ludicrous, triggered a burning "I'll show you!" passion that finally got me into high gear. I had the potential all along, as many of you do, but I was frittering away my talent and hence my life. Sometimes we need a kick in the pants to get us going. I certainly did.Bushnell also wisely advised readers to be more tolerant of what they perceive as arrogance. Some people who are dripping with arrogance have good reason for their lofty self-assessments. Arrogance has a positive side effect: it incentivizes those with it to go the extra mile to maintain justification for it. In my years working as an ER doctor, I saw that the most humble physicians had good reason to be humble. They put people in graves who should have been saved. I began my medical career being very humble, and I too had good reason for it. Then, finally, something clicked in my brain and I became very good at saving lives but not in tolerating the BS that American physicians are subjected to that makes many of them long for a way out of medicine. I had an exit strategy focused on creativity, which is virtually immiscible in the medical profession that values conformity above all else.Nolan Bushnell is more than an accomplished genius. He is a genuinely great human being who can look past the superficial and inspire people with more than a paycheck, unlike other tech entrepreneurs who often seem coldly robotic and oddly Machiavellian. I'm sure some of them will bristle while reading Bushnell's book - IF they read it, which is unlikely, given their unjustified arrogance in thinking they have all of the great ideas and know all they need to know about finding and nurturing creative talent.I am intrigued by Bushnell's current focus ("improving the educational process by integrating the latest developments in brain science") because that is the ultimate innovation that will catalyze endless additional ones, and because of my experience in transforming myself from dunce to doctor and beyond. My sixth-grade teacher called me "slow," which triggered a burning desire to prove him wrong. But how? It took years and some serendipity to discover the solutions that crystallized during the summer vacation between my 10th and 11th grades. I'd struggled so much until then my grand plan was to drop out and work on an auto assembly line. When I returned, I could easily keep up with the smartest kids in class. I aced the rest of high school, college, the MCAT exam, and medical school, graduating in the top 1% of my class even though my ADD made the regimentation of med school pure torture. I crave intellectual diversity and want to do 100 things at the same time, not just sit and passively absorb information. I love learning, but the traditional way is so misguided and counterproductive the educators who perpetuate it should embrace superior alternatives. I found methods that worked wonders for me and others, such as thousands of people I've helped around the world, including a couple of my friends who were trapped in boring, dead-end jobs and are now physicians and medical school professors.While intelligence can be improved, creativity is even more responsive. Bushnell's masterpiece presented valuable ways to spur corporate creativity, while I found ways to supercharge individual creativity. Collectively, this information could kickstart our economy and engender an unprecedented intellectual renaissance, but people so wedded to doing things the old way fight change even if it could clearly benefit them.A case in point: Years ago during a long conversation with the CEO of a lawn equipment manufacturer, he mentioned his desire to produce tractors but he couldn't figure out how to offer a clearly better product so he wouldn't need to compete on price in a market that is already saturated with low-cost manufacturers. I have inventions (prototyped and proven, not vague ideas) that would give him a huge innovative edge in tractors and snowblowers -- another subject we discussed. At that time, I was so eager to get my foot in the door I offered to sell him the ideas for $1 each. He considered my offer for several weeks but said no, as I revealed in a blog article ("Meet a pigheaded CEO who is fettering our economy").A few American corporations are open to accepting ideas from outsiders, but most persist in thinking they can generate all the ideas they need. A pervasive myth is that engineers can invent. Some can, but many cannot, and when they do, what results is usually incremental improvements, not transformative ones that revolutionize the process or supersede it.That's why the American economy is stagnating. The USA left other nations in the dust by introducing one invention after another that made a night-and-day difference in how something was done. The last great invention to do that was the Internet, conceived decades ago. Where are the big breakthroughs now?I suspect that many inventors get so frustrated dealing with hidebound companies that they just give up. To prosper, we need to become more receptive to new ideas and those who generate them, instead of resisting and mocking them, as is all-too-common human nature. Nolan Bushnell is not afflicted by that, but he is truly unique. To harmonize with others, Americans quickly learn to feign modesty and hide their gifts if they have them to lessen predictable retribution from folks with a crab mentality (Google it) or the tall poppy syndrome (ditto).In addition to stimulating intelligence and creativity, my brainpower boosting methods also kindled my empathy so dramatically it reshaped how I feel about other people and even animals. Genuine empathy (not the fake veneer of it we're taught) can be easily instilled and otherwise fostered, but our hidebound system that supposedly champions innovation instead exhausts more energy resisting it. What a pity, considering what it could prevent: school shootings, innumerable other crimes, fragile marriages, and Americans HATING and backstabbing others with dissimilar political opinions.Interestingly, I also stumbled upon a way to make time seem to pass more slowly. The answer to that eternal mystery could also synergistically fuel a global recovery. We're not wedded to the past, so let's not cling to it. Encourage everyone you know to tune out frivolous time drains and tune into Bushnell's book so we find more Steve Jobses. They're out there.Billionaire philanthropist John Paul DeJoria said, "Most people tiptoe through life to make it safely to death." Few people are brave enough to think outside the box, but that's where the great ideas are. If we want a vibrant economy and problems solved, not perpetuated, we should heed what Apple said in their "Think Different" commercials:"Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. But the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. While some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do."

Nolan Bushnell is a technology pioneer, entrepreneur and engineer. Often cited as the father of the video game industry, he is best known as the founder of Atari Corporation and Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theater. Over the past four decades he has founded numerous companies, including Catalyst Technologies, the first technology incubator; Etak, the first digital navigation system; ByVideo, the first online ordering system; and uWink, the first touchscreen menu ordering and entertainment system, among others. Currently, with his new company, Brainrush, he is devoting his talents to enhancing and improving the educational process by integrating the latest in brain science. Additionally, he enjoys motivating and inspiring others in his speeches on entrepreneurship, creativity, innovation and education.In this volume, written with Gene Stone, Bushnell shares just about everything he has learned -- thus far -- about the do's and don'ts of identifying, recruiting, hiring, onboarding, nurturing and (when necessary) protecting, and then retaining the [begin italics] creative [end italics] any organization needs to achieve its strategic objectives. In fact, having sufficient creative talent should be among those objectives. Immediately he establishes a direct and personal, almost conversational rapport with his reader as he focuses on a series of insights, 52 of which are admonitions that serve as titles of 52 brief chapters. For example, "Make your workplace an advertisement fir your company (#1), "Hire the crazy" (#10), "Hire under your nose" (#15), "Champion the bad ideas" (#27), "Neutralize the naysayers" (#40), and "Take creatives to creative places (#42).Here in Dallas near the downtown area, there is a Farmer's Market at which several merchants offer slices of fresh fruit as samples of their wares. In that same spirit, I now share a few brief excerpts from Bushnell's narrative to suggest the thrust and flavor of his style. o "Hiring a creative is about embracing risk, not mitigating it. So if you're starting a company, perhaps your first task is to find creatives who can hire other creatives." (Page 40)o "The willingness to get up after a speech, approach the speaker, and tell him how much you enjoyed his ideas speaks volumes. I have a friend in the New York media who has hired all of his assistants from the pool of people who've come up after a speech to ask questions." (59)o "One of the best hires I ever made was a waitress at a California Pizza Kitchen restaurant. She was funny, as she turned all of my feeble attempts at humor into real comedy, and she made everyone around her feel terrific. In awe, my whole family watched this woman as if she had a 10,000-watt spotlight trained on her. I hired her right then and there to develop some innovative marketing programs. She turned out to be spectacular, pouring the same positive energy that made her an amazing waitress into her new job with me." (71-72)o "I believe that everyone who wants to be creative must find a place where his or her mind can be alone and untouched by the insanity of complexity. There is a place, a state of mind, somewhere between cognitive reasoning and dreaming, a place you can find just before you go to sleep or just after you wake up. It is from here that imaginative thoughts spring." (130)o "The skills that make people highly creative do not necessarily make them articulate or even glib. So the other important task of a manager is to communicate for them -- to recognize the good in their project and then become their in-house public-relations director. A great manager is a great cheerleader -- of adults." (158)o "Through years of experience I've discovered that letting people write all over walls, in any medium, promotes creativity. Most creative types think in terms of broad strokes. They are often limited [or feel limited] by the space available on a piece of paper or a computer monitor. Moreover, drawing while talking to someone held=s communicate complex ideas."Now I install huge white boards and/pr chalk boards everywhere in my companies. In one, we painted every wall with blackboard paint, some green and some black. The building shouted [begin italics] creative [end italics]! to everyone, workers and visitors alike." (167)o "Toxics are more dangerous -- and often harder to recognize -- [than are Naysayers]. They constantly reframe every possible new development at the company into one that is good for them -- without any interest in whether or not it's good for the company. If the company tanks, they can always get a new job, since they're constantly working on their résumés and their contacts. They don't care. They don't work for the company. They work for themselves. Toxics are extremely subtle, preternaturally political, and potentially psychopathic. Exterminate them." (197)o One day, "Steve [Jobs] also told me that he had visited The Metropolitan Museum of Art the previous day, and that his notebooks were brimming with ideas to fix the marketing and design of some things he was working on. I never found out the specifics of which pieces of art had inspired these notes. I do know that a random walk through a museum can inspire anyone." (225)I realize that the title of this book will attract attention but as Bushnell would be among the first to acknowledge, Steve Jobs was one-of-a-kind. He once hired him, they became and remained friends, and Bushnell considers Jobs one of the most creative people he has ever known. Whether or not Apple would hire Steve Jobs today is subject to discussion but I am certain that Bushnell would.No brief commentary such as mine can possibly do full justice to the quality and value of the material that he provides. However, I hope that I have at least suggested why I think so highly of his lively examination of what could be viewed as "the care and feeding" of some of the most valuable and least understood members of any workforce. Also, I hope that those who read my commentary will be better prepared to determine whether or not to obtain and read this book. In that event, I hope what it offers will help you, not to find the next Steve Jobs but rather, to locate within or beyond your organization the creative talent you need to achieve the given organizational objectives.

Uno spaccato incredibile di un'epoca in cui la tecnologia dei computer stava esplodendo, visto con gli occhi di un protagonista indiscusso di quei tempi: Nolan Bushnell, fondatore di Atari, ditta dove lavorò Steve Jobs da giovane. Il libro si concentra in particolar modo sulle dinamiche che le persone creative hanno e di come le società debbano tenere conto di queste diversità. È un excursus su modi di pensare non lineari, quelli della creatività e di come si possano conciliare con l'organizzazione gerarchica e la categorizzazione messa in atto nelle aziende. Da leggere e da mettere in atto...come dice lui per rivoluzionare la vita sul lavoro...

Love this book. Watched Easy to Learn, Hard to Master and was so impressed by Nolan Bushnell. Searched for any books that he had written and found this. It has so many great lessons and tips in it. I wish Nolan would write an autobiography now!He has even inspired me to produce an educational mobile app built that helps children with their maths.

Never seen any text before with such variety of damn good advice in a way that makes acting in your business so intuitive and embarrassingly simple. Quite incredible.

Fantastic Book. All Corporate People Should Read It. Particularly Team Leader and HR Department.

I had the chance to listen to an Interview with Nolan Bushnell to learn that he was the father of video games.So on the credibility level, hiring the young Steve Jobs, founding Atari and still being in business after all these years made me believe he may have something to teach about creativity.Well there's a lot to learn, but much more to act upon. Just pick 5-10 over the 50 or so pongs (advice but by no means rules).The book is a good investment as long as you commit to act on something and this what Mr. Bushnell is proposing.