Zen for Strategy

Abstract

Iconoclasts with strongly held beliefs and a willingness to buck orthodoxy, Apple's Steve Jobs and the Chicago Bulls' Phil Jackson shared similarities in character, leadership style, and life experience that extended beyond the extraordinary successes they achieved in their chosen fields. Both came of age in the United States of the mid-20th century, a time and place characterized by Americans' growing interest in philosophical traditions outside of the Western mainstream. In their teens and twenties, both men became interested in Eastern religious practices. As young men, Jobs (who would as a teenager travel to India to study Buddhism) and Jackson (whose interest in Eastern practices earned him the nickname The Zen Master) developed a particular affinity for the Zen tradition of Buddhism, which had a lasting influence on each man's worldview. Although Jackson and Jobs were very different leaders operating in remarkably different industries, both men's rise to the top of intensively competitive fields were influenced by their commitment to three Zen principles: nondualism, practical wisdom, and inherent enlightenment.This note gives a brief overview of the history of Zen and the philosophical framework that underpins it, then describes the potential that these three tenets hold for unlocking strategic insights. Excerpt UVA-S-0318 Rev. Jan. 10, 2020 Zen for Strategy San Francisco, California, January 2007 Dressed in his usual blue jeans and black turtleneck, Steve Jobs strode across the stage at San Francisco's Moscone Center to deliver the Macworld 2007 keynote address. Apple's annual extravaganza attracted tens of thousands of technology enthusiasts eager to learn about the company's latest innovations. For the many software developers, journalists, and fans in attendance, Jobs's remarks and dramatic presentation were Macworld's most anticipated event. Ten years earlier, Jobs had been reinstated as CEO to the company he cofounded, having been fired by John Sculley a dozen years earlier. At the time of Jobs's return, Apple was losing market share, laying off employees, and near insolvency. But over the next decade, Apple would return from the brink of bankruptcy to become a highly profitable Wall Street darling and a dominant brand on the cutting edge of consumer technology. Many of the products that fueled Apple's reemergence—the iMac computer, the OS X operating system, the iTunes online media marketplace, and the iPod music player—had been introduced in one of Jobs's Macworld keynote addresses. . . .