Here's to the crazy ones

In the days since Steve Jobs passed away, many words have been used to describe the man. Brilliant. Legendary. Risk-taking. Innovative. But one label has been used far more than any other one.

Visionary.

Although visionary sounds like one of those easy-to-define words, when you actually try to pin it down it is surprisingly difficult. When I looked up “visionary” in the Oxford English dictionary, I was surprised by the definition I found there. It defines a visionary as “someone who indulges in fantastic ideas or schemes, incapable of being carried out or realized.” A lot of people certainly would have applied that description to Steve Jobs before he founded Apple Computer with all of his crazy technology ideas. But now, what do we mean by calling him a “visionary” when he doesn’t fit the definition of the word at all?

I think we call Steve Jobs a visionary because that’s the only word we can think of that comes close to encompassing what he represented. He was someone who saw a future that no one had ever come close to imagining before and went on to create his vision, changing the world forever in the process. And yes, while some may argue against his greatness for whatever reasons (negative effects of the new technology he ushered in, etc.) no one can deny he changed the world.

From everything I’ve seen here in my two years and some odd months at Princeton, our greatest unconscious collective longing is to be the next Steve Jobs. It’s this little secret voice inside all of us that influences us to push harder and do more in every aspect of our lives. Some Princetonians will certainly own up to wanting to be a leader, change the world and be remembered for that change long after they are gone. However, most of us here are inherently practical and realize that we will probably have to be content with changing the world in a little way in our own field. But even resigned to the likely reality, there’s still that secret dream to be a visionary, someone who has a huge influence on the world and makes lasting changes. It’s the ultimate fantasy for the bunch of type-A, driven, idealistic, aspiring leaders we all are.

So if, in personality, Princetonians are so similar to Steve Jobs on paper, what stops us from getting to that next level as he did? In my mind, it’s failure. Most Princetonians understand that it is OK to fail (or “not succeed,” the more politically correct term) in theory, and might even be OK with small failures in actuality. After all, Princetonians are disposed to take bigger risks, shoot for more and try to be more because they recognize how much more they can gain by doing so. But what if you did that — gave it your all and failed miserably? What if you failed completely, totally, absolutely 100%? What if you were kicked out of a company you created from the ground up like Steve Jobs? In my mind, that would be a fatal blow to most Princetonians (myself included) and almost impossible to recover from.

But not to Steve Jobs. Roughly 10 years after he was ousted out of Apple, he made his messiah-like return to the then-failing company. To say he succeeded is a understatement. In 15 years, he brought us numerous versions of the Apple computer, the iTunes store, the iPod and its various incarnations, the iPhone and the iPad. During one hot summer day this past July, Apple surpassed Exxon as the richest company in the world, worth $341.5 billon and surpassed the U.S. Treasury in cash reserves ($76 billion to $74 billion). That is so far beyond simple “success” that there isn’t really an accurate word for it. So we label the man that started it all with the only description we can find that fits — visionary.

The Apple “Think Different” ad campaign, started in 1997, summed it up best. It tells us, “Here’s to the crazy ones. The rebels. The troublemakers. The ones who see things differently. 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.” So if Princetonians are to take away one lesson from the story of Jobs’ life, I think it should be to not only succeed in a big way but fail in a big way too. Looking at Steve Jobs and the visionaries before him — Thomas Edison, Walt Disney — that seems to be a common principle that all such men adhered to. So let’s pay homage to the visionary man and live a little more like him. Let’s be the “crazy ones.”