What Would Steve Do?

Jobs was a jerk, but his leadership lesson is more about product than personality

Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

Apple CEO Steve Jobs watches a video of the new iPhone 3G as he delivers the keynote address at the Apple Worldwide Web Developers Conference June 9, 2008 in San Francisco, California.

Technology has been a consistent bright spot in the U.S. economy over the past few years, and no company has epitomized that better than Apple. Perhaps that's why business schools and leadership coaches have been talking in recent months about what management lessons should be taken from Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs, which provided an anthropological look at the habits of the most famous CEO since GE's "Neutron Jack" Welch. In it, Jobs is revealed as both an autocratic bully and a business genius who executed the most successful corporate turnaround so far this century.

Perhaps the book should be...

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