>"Many years later, when NeXT acquired Apple for negative -$400M"
and
>"We would "throw them into the cauldron", and stir it, and soon nobody remembered exactly whose ideas were which. This let us make a great soup, a great potion, without worrying about who had what idea. This was critically important, in retrospect, to decouple the CEO from the ideas."
Really? I've always considered it the only way to look at it.
"Well, just because he tells you that something is awful or great, it doesn't necessarily mean he'll feel that way tomorrow. You have to low-pass filter his input. And then, he's really funny about ideas. If you tell him a new idea, he'll usually tell you that he thinks it's stupid. But then, if he actually likes it, exactly one week later, __he'll come back to you and propose your idea to you, as if he thought of it.__"
I thought Bud was surely exaggerating, until I observed Steve in action over the next few weeks. The reality distortion field was a confounding melange of a charismatic rhetorical style, an indomitable will, and an eagerness to bend any fact to fit the purpose at hand. If one line of argument failed to persuade, he would deftly switch to another. Sometimes, he would throw you off balance by suddenly adopting your position as his own, without acknowledging that he ever thought differently.
from: http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Reality_Distortion_Fi...
And I wonder how critically important it was, also, that the mixing pot be attended in person, with spoken words the only ingredients allowed?
If it's done by email, no-one forgets which idea was the CEO's.