Steve Jobs on Innovation and Creativity: Change the World

Good afternoon. Everyone's probably been sitting here for a long time. I just got here this afternoon. So I'm my mind somewhere over Iowa. But a few things. Everyone here I was told this real bright. Is that true? Plus, I want to meet Eric later on. Which one's Eric? Oh, hi, Eric. How you doing? And a lot of stuff here is rags to riches. I was listening back there. Sort of want to be careful about that because there's a lot of people that have been real successful in other terms that aren't here because maybe they didn't make a lot of money that you want to listen to very carefully. And one of the things that tends to run through some of the things that people here have talked about is innovation and creativity.

And if you're really bright, have you ever thought about what it is to be intelligent? Probably some of you have. Right. Because you meet your friend and he's pretty dumb and maybe you think you're smarter and you wonder what the difference is. And and I've thought about this a little bit myself. And one of the things is it seems to me a lot of it's the a lot of its memory, but a lot of it's the ability to sort of zoom out like you're in a city and you could look at the whole thing from about the 80th floor down at the city. And while other people are trying to figure out how to get from point A to point B, reading these stupid little maps, you can just see it all out in front of you. You see the whole thing. You can make connections that just seem obvious because you can see the whole thing. That's why bright people feel guilty a lot, because they come up with stuff that they just say, hey, look at this. And other people give them these dumb awards and they feel funny. But the key thing is that if you're going to make connections which are innovative, you you to connect two experiences together, that you have to not have the same bag of experiences as everyone else does, or else you're going to make the same connections and then you won't be innovative and then nobody will give you an award. So what you've got to do is get different experiences than the normal course of events. And one of the funny things about being bright is everyone puts you on this path to go to high school, go to college. I've heard about some kid that's 14 on his way to Stanford, and that's great.

That's sort of out of the ordinary. But you might want to think about going to Paris and being a poet for a few years, or you might want to go to a third world country. I'd highly advise that. And see people and lepers with their hands falling off and all that stuff. It's very much so worth doing. You know, fall in love with two people at once. Walt Disney took LSD. Do you know that? He did once. And that's where the idea for Fantasia came from. It's true. And you can go hear stories about all these people. And the key thing that comes through is that they had a variety of experiences which they could draw upon in order to try to solve a problem or attack a particular dilemma in a kind of unique way. And so one of the things that you'll get a lot of pressure to do is to go in one very clear direction and believe in God and all that other stuff. And that's great, but don't ever walk by a Zen Buddhist because of that. Sit down and talk and buy them lunch. One of the things that I had in my mind growing up, I don't know how it got there, was that the world was sort of something that happened just outside your peepers. And you didn't really try to change it, you just sort of tried to find your place in it and have the best life you could. And it would all just go on out there and there were some pretty bright people running it. And as you start to interact with some of these people, you find they're not a lot different than you. The people actually making these decisions every day that are sort of

running the world are not really very much different than you. And they might have a little more judgment in some areas, but basically they're the same. And once you realize that, you start to feel you have a responsibility to do something about it because the world's in pretty bad shape right now. And I guess one of the things that motivates a lot of people that I've seen that actually get out and do something in any different field is that we all sort of eat food that other people cook and wear clothing that other people make and speak a language that other people evolved and use someone else's mathematics. And we're sort of taking from this giant pool constantly. And the most ecstatic thing in the whole world is actually put something back into that pool. And I think people from all the fields that maybe you've heard from here and a whole bunch that you haven't would express the same sort of feeling. It's the most ecstatic thing that I've encountered. So I would highly recommend it. And one of the major areas I know probably with all this stuff I might not be invited back here next year, so I'll say it now. When you pass a certain age, I don't know what it is, 25, 30 years old, you sort of as a human being inherit the responsibility of being a guardian of the earth for future generations of which you are all a member to inherit.

And I'm not exactly sure what that means, but just obviously that's the case. And I think this particular generation of people that is your guardian is doing an extremely poor job in one area, and one area where all of the help that you all can muster is really necessary. And that is that the chances that this planet's going to remain in one piece through your natural lifetimes is not extremely high right now. And it's fairly dismal. And I anticipate having some kids one day and helping them grow up to be sane human beings. And you people are going to be the people that are running the planet when my kids grow up. So would you please pay attention to this problem and try to do something about it? Because I'd like to see my kids grow up and be able to come here and sit like you and listen to a bunch of funny people. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.