Living Creatively: Creative Crafts

If there is one individual who I find myself looking to more than any other for inspiration, it is Steve Jobs. A lot of people consider Jobs to be a great entrepreneur, but I don’t really fit him into that categorization for a few reasons. Let me say that more clearly: Steve Jobs was not one of the great entrepreneurs of the 20th century.

Following is my argument for why that is…

Jobs founded three companies in his lifetime: Apple, Next, and Pixar. We know that Apple was the big winner of the bunch, with over $100 billion in CASH sitting in its coffers. The massive success of Apple outshines that of Next and Pixar, but these have both been very successful companies in their own rights. Personally, I’d be thrilled to create just one company of Next’s caliber, and Jobs created three in the course of his lifetime. Pixar went on to be acquired by Disney and Next, the “loser” of the bunch, was still eventually acquired by Apple for nearly half a billion dollars.

So if Jobs has created three multi-million dollar companies, how can I say that he isn’t one of the greatest entrepreneurs of the 21st century?

I say this because, while jobs had moments of great entrepreneurial inspiration, he also worked in the companies that he founded for extended periods of time. On the entrepreneurial spectrum, Jobs would sit somewhere between a one time founder like Phil Knight and the frenetic non-stop founder of Richard Branson.

I don’t say this to discredit Jobs in any way. In fact, I believe Jobs deserves recognition as being one of histories greats. And there is one thing that Jobs has done better than anybody else in the history of the world. And yes, I mean it.

Steve Jobs was the greatest product manager that the world has ever seen.

Jobs has repeatedly built products that have spanned categories and even created entirely new ones. He was the first to understand the direction that the music industry was going in and he capitalized on it with iTunes.

His ability to do so is testament to his vision and unique understanding of the time he lived in, a time of collapse and disruption when an electronics company could become a publishing company nearly overnight.

Jobs genius started with the Macbook, but went mainstream when he unveiled the first generation of the iPod. Looking back on this product now, it seems a bit clunky and obtuse, but Jobs was at the cutting edge during the time it was produced in the middle 2000s.

From the iPod, Jobs set his sights on his next great innovation, the iPhone. It was the iPhone that was the clearest expression of Jobs’ appreciation for minimalist design, sleek lines, and no clutter. To our eyes in 2015, the design certainly appears overly skeumorphic, but at the time it was first released in 2007, the iPhone not only met the standard of the day, it set it.

Product management requires an appreciation for several disciplines. One must work with marketing to understand precisely what the end user wants, and coordinate with engineering in order to bring those specifications to life. Jobs had an innate understanding of this that even the best product management guru in Silicon Valley can teach.

So there you have him, Steve Jobs. Not the greatest entrepreneur in the history of the world, but the greatest product manager of history, bar none.

Before getting into the details of this post, one thing to mention is that you want to make sure you have the right camera when it comes to your new creative pursuit of photography. Personally I recommend the Rebel (comparison here) but everybody is going to have their own taste and flavor when it comes to selecting cameras. IF you want to see even more, you can check out Canon’s Youtube Channel.

The automatic coverage feature on today’s cheap digital camera models is frequently better than the auto exposure was on expensive movie cameras ten years ago. Improvements in computers permit an extremely advanced auto exposure mind to be packed into a small space in today’s digital camera models. Even the most advanced auto coverage functions may occasionally simply make a mistake or read the picture wrong and set the wrong publicity. The exposure compensation feature of your digital camera allows you to pay for these mis readings by making your pictures lighter or darker than you’d get using auto exposure alone.

Here are several tips for enhancing your digital pictures by utilizing the exposure compensation feature of the digital camera. Take a photo and check the publicity – Once you take your photo, review it in your camera LCD screen. Among the joys of digital photography is that you may always lighten or darken an electronic photo later using Adobe Adobe Photoshop or another kind of digital photo editing software. While you are still on the picture, why don’t you utilize the exposure compensation feature to make the correction in the original. Adobe Photoshop can darken a picture after the fact, however it cannot bring back details which were lost within an excessively bright section of your original photo.

If they got beaten up when the image was taken, they’re merely not there to bring back. Select the camera program settings – You may always use exposure compensation with the fully automatic mode, but there’s a better way. If you wish to increase the depth of field, change to aperture priority and maintain the camera aperture small. Obviously this may reduce the shutter speed to permit more light to come in to the camera. Be sure the resulting exposure will not be at a shutter speed of less than 1\/125th unless you are using a tripod. If you are shooting a moving object, you’ll have to switch to shutter priority and set the shutter speed fast enough to eliminate blurring – usually at least 1\/400th.

Just bear in mind that, whenever you do that, the depth of field are affected, therefore focus cautiously on your main subject. After you have selected aperture or shutter priority, take another photo and check the results. In case the depth of field and sharpness are appropriate, now it is time to use exposure compensation. Most digital cameras allow you to increase or decrease the auto exposure setting by 2 stops in 1\/3 stop increments.

I have been writing a lot of haikus lately, and they have gotten me thinking about Rugged Creativity. What is Rugged Creativity?

In a sentence, Rugged Creativity is the creativity you need to survive in a rugged world. That hiker who had to gnaw his own arm off when he was trapped un a boulder represents rugged creativity. The Ethiopian entrepreneur who went from a shack to a mansion almost overnight because of her inspiring idea to create internet access for all of Ethopian citizens? Rugged creativity.

It is creativity born of necessity, the kind of creativity that helps you to survive and does not compromise. If it is soft, it is not rugged creativity. If it forgives, it is not rugged creativity.

If it allows you to think unfiltered and unhindered thoughts, doesn’t bend the the will of any man, and tastes like the whiskey on Hemmingway’s breath. That, my friend, is rugged creativity.

May it be with you too.

Peter

We are truly living in an age of globalization and technological disruption. Are you going to ride these waves, which are bigger than anything we have seen before, or be left behind.

I would caution you against being left behind. While tech might not be “your thing”, the truth is that we are going to be facing greater and greater economic disparity that is already growing rapidly between those who embrace technology and those who don’t. Think about it this way- are you more productive on a typewriter or a computer? Do you work better when connected with literally everyone in your office, or when you need to send carbon copy letters by snail mail that takes weeks to arrive.

I think the answer is obvious, and while I am NOT going to say that there is an impending apocalypse, I am very aware of the social unrest that technological is accelerating. You need only look as far as the Arab Spring to see the huge role that Twitter played in the unveiling of the government.

So how do you survive by playing this new game of globalization and disruption. The first thing is that you need to learn to engage in the outside world. If you can’t speak multiple languages and communicate wit people regardless of their culture and socioeconomic background you, my friend, are going to be left behind. Thankfully, there are options for you. For one, you can find global work placements more easily than ever before. For example, you can start a company in China like my friend Scott did, or you can strike out on your own as a freelancing “digital nomad”.

You should also be working to pick up as many skills as possible. In this day and age, there is simply no excuse not to be improving your skills and knowledge at a rapid pace. After all, people in Bangladesh are, why can’t you, dear first world citizen, be bothered to? The truth is that The West has rested on its laurels for decades and arguably even centuries, but now, thanks to a flattened playing field, we are now facing competition from places we never had it before.

I welcome it personally. You should to. After all, the rewards for the innovative, the global, and the disruptive are potentially great, and if you are willing to study at a website like Coursera or Udemy you can also improve your skillset rapidly. If you don’t- trust me, you will be left behind.

Peter