∎ [PDF] Free Finding the Next Steve Jobs How to Find Hire Keep and Nurture Creative Talent Nolan Bushnell Gene Stone 9780988879515 Books

Finding the Next Steve Jobs How to Find Hire Keep and Nurture Creative Talent Nolan Bushnell Gene Stone 9780988879515 Books

Download As PDF : Finding the Next Steve Jobs How to Find Hire Keep and Nurture Creative Talent Nolan Bushnell Gene Stone 9780988879515 Books

Finding the Next Steve Jobs How to Find Hire Keep and Nurture Creative Talent Nolan Bushnell Gene Stone 9780988879515 Books

I first bought this book because I thought to find more anecdotes about a young Steve Jobs as the title was suggesting.
In fact there some stories about Steve but nothing more then I already knew.

Then I start to find Bushnell "pongs", as he call the different sections of the book, quite interesting and under certainly point of view delightful. But honestly they are less then stories, really summarized, maybe the longest "pong" is 4 pages. If you take out of the book all the blank pages the book would be probably half of its actual size. It is not matter of waist of space on the book, which would have been better filled up with longer stories and more details, it is that it seems they wanted make the book look bigger then what it is in real.

Anyway I enjoy reading it and I could get to know better the genius of Bushnell.


Tags : Finding the Next Steve Jobs: How to Find, Hire, Keep and Nurture Creative Talent [Nolan Bushnell, Gene Stone] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. In Silicon Valley legend Nolan Bushnell's first book, he explains how to find and hire employees who have the potential to be the next Steve Jobs. Nolan Bushnell founded the groundbreaking gaming company Atari in 1972,Nolan Bushnell, Gene Stone,Finding the Next Steve Jobs: How to Find, Hire, Keep and Nurture Creative Talent,Net Minds Corporation,0988879514,Corporate culture,Creative ability in business,Business & Economics Human Resources & Personnel Management,Business & Economics : Workplace Culture,Business Economics Finance,Human Resources & Personnel Management,Workplace Culture

Finding the Next Steve Jobs How to Find Hire Keep and Nurture Creative Talent Nolan Bushnell Gene Stone 9780988879515 Books Reviews

If you want to study accomplishment, someone once told me, don't look only at the creative individual's life and choices. Look at the person's parents' background, because those people likely established an environment that permitted (if not inspired) the freedom to think differently. (Which is not to say that parents get the credit, but rather that they enabled the creativity, intentionally or otherwise.) If that's so, then it also makes sense to look at the attitudes of creative people's mentors, too -- and top on the list has to be Nolan Bushnell.

I think Bushnell is less-well-known to younger techies and entrepreneurs, and that's a damned shame. He founded and/or ran several companies that blazed new paths and did the unexpected, most prominently Atari and Chuck E Cheese -- as well as quite a few that didn't succeed, about which he is more candid than most. That alone would make his business advice worth listening to.

In this context, however, Bushnell is the most interesting (or marketable?) because of his impact on the young Steve Jobs, when Jobs (and then Woz) came to work at Atari. Bushnell saw Jobs' skills (and his weaknesses, too) and took the kid under his wing, creating a lifelong relationship in which they clearly inspired one another. And, as Bushnell writes, "The truth is that very few companies would hire Steve, even today. Why? Because he was an outlier. To most potential employers, he'd just seem like a jerk in bad clothing. And yet a jerk in bad clothing can be exactly the right guy to give your company the highest market capitalization in the world."

In this book, therefore, Bushnell shares snippets of advice -- he calls them "pongs" -- that can help a business identify and foster the creative talent within the organization. Most are short chapters with both anecdotes and specific suggestions, making them easily consumable, a little at time, for people with busy lives (doing creative things, I assume). There's advice on everything from hiring interviews to finding creatives (via Twitter!) to "instituting a degree of anarchy" to requiring risk (and "rewarding turkeys").

So, for example, Bushnell suggests one way to make it harder for a company to say No is to make people responsible for their criticism, because those with the most authority in a go/no-go decision "tend to be the ones who can analyze it least intelligently." One way, he says, is to set a rule that objections must be written down. For one thing, it forces the critic to be specific "If the worst part of an idea is its cost, writing down actual numbers forces people to be more precise," Bushnell says, and it lets the idea's creator rebut or investigate the options.

The pongs make for outstanding reading, but I reluctantly withhold a fifth star because I'm not completely sure who will read this book. Certainly it's not the people whom we would agree NEED to read it, such as all the "We've always done it this way" bean-counter-led organizations that... well, I'm sure you've worked for a few of them, too. If you're trapped in one of those businesses, trying to break out, I worry that you'll just get depressed. The book is great reading for businesspeople who already are thinking in terms of fostering creativity, but I wonder how much of the advice will be really NEW.

I absolutely enjoyed the book -- as much for the geeky nostalgia about what it took to create a gaming company in the 70s and 80s, when microcomputers were spawning a revolution. I think some of his ideas are great, and I hope your company adopts them. But even if it doesn't, you'll enjoy reading this.
I bought this book because, although am not in a tech industry, I do work in Silicon Valley. I am always looking for insights into the people I deal with. Many books ( with the exception of Steve Jobs biography) have been very boring.
Not so with Nolan Bushnell's book. FIVE STARS!
Mr. Bushnell has written a well crafted and fascinating look into a world few of us know. Each chapter is a "sound bite"...short (2-3 pages) but packed with interesting facts about companies we all are familiar with.
Not only that, the very subject of of creativity begs to be explored. And, apparently Mr.Bushnell, has dedicated much of his life to finding creative individuals, much like himself, and opening doors for them to explore their dreams and our present and future.
I bought this book for my three administrators.
I would hope anyone involved with creative people will pick up this book. We seem to have lost the deep and abiding respect, hope and faith in the creative individual.
It is so good to know that there are powerful people like Mr. Bushnell who are also ethical, empathetic, in touch with humanity and humorous!
Buy this book!
This is my favorite business book. Primarily because not only does it have incredible ideas and a great attitude, the ideas are direct and easy to execute. For example, living by dice

Feeling overwhelmed with everything you need to do this year? Want to break old habits, get out of a rut, or change your daily routine? Live by dice! Here’s how

1) Buy Dungeons and Dragons dice. Keep the 20 sided and the 8 sided dice in your kitchen, car, or office.
2) Create a list of 8 new daily habits you would like. Every day, roll the 8 die, and do whatever number it lands on.
3) Create a list of 20 lifelong goals. Roll the 20 die, and do whatever number it lands on until you finish the goal. Then, roll again.

I love this strategy praised by Atari founder Nolan Bushnell. He didn’t invent the strategy, but it’s the reason he wrote my favorite business book of all time, Finding The Next Steve Jobs.
This book was both inspirational and insightful to me, particularly since I had the pleasure of interviewing at the corporate office for Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre during the very early 80's. So many friends went on to work for Atari, Apple, etc... As a creative, the pleasure and excitement of both living and working in Silicon Valley has brought great joy and meaning to our lives. Nolan Bushnell & Gene Stone have both put into words how to find, hire, keep and nurture the unconventional minds it takes to make-up (in my opinion) what has become the "Florence" of our time. The most successful patrons are those willing to take chances on people who are not only passionate about everything they do in life, but also intrinsically motivated and possess the moxie to flourish in their own ways.
I first bought this book because I thought to find more anecdotes about a young Steve Jobs as the title was suggesting.
In fact there some stories about Steve but nothing more then I already knew.

Then I start to find Bushnell "pongs", as he call the different sections of the book, quite interesting and under certainly point of view delightful. But honestly they are less then stories, really summarized, maybe the longest "pong" is 4 pages. If you take out of the book all the blank pages the book would be probably half of its actual size. It is not matter of waist of space on the book, which would have been better filled up with longer stories and more details, it is that it seems they wanted make the book look bigger then what it is in real.

Anyway I enjoy reading it and I could get to know better the genius of Bushnell.