Steve Jobs: ENTP
This Research article was originally posted on SRI a few days after Steve Jobs passing. But is explicitly tied to the work of Godtype.com
Steve Jobs: Technical Marketer Extraordinaire passes
Steve Jobs was the quintessential ENTP Inventor*, and a role model for that small percentage of the population that see’s the world through the eyes of an ENTP temperament. It has been annoying seeing the media begin a dialog in the short days since his passing comparing Jobs to Edison. There is No comparison! Edison was a polar opposite on the (2) primary personality traits that made Steve Jobs “Think Different’ and to my own biased temperament – Uniquely Brilliant. Jobs’ preferences for Extroversion and Perception versus Edisons Introversion and Judgement. It would be fair to compare Bill Gates to Edison, but when we speak of Jobs we are dealing with a completely different animal. Steve Jobs viewed his world with an external rational and perceptive focus and not the Internal focus of Edison. While Edison was relentless in his pursuits to solve primarily personal problems, Steve Jobs put his focus on solving problems for the world at large which he would envision within his own Mind much as Tesla did a century earlier. History surely seems to repeat itself, Tesla was to Edison in the early 20th century what Jobs has been to Bill Gates in the 21st. While Bill gates was happy with his difficult DOS operating system that only other Rational Geeks like myself could ever learn and master. Steve Jobs, like Tesla before him put his focus on making products “for everyone” and software that the rest of the world could learn and use with ease. Without the competition with Jobs who was pushing the envelope on making computing a user friendly endeavor smart phones and Pad computers would still be a decade or two from implementation. How is it that a man who passes at the relatively young age of 56 have completed so much that we take for granted?
The Apple logo has always represented to me some of the answers to that question. Though the folklore to the logo’s creation is different than what I presume to be true, I am positive that jobs chose the “bitten” apple in order to show his personal quest of the forbidden fruit represented in one of the oldest stories from Judeo Christian literature. 
The logo and the biblical story for that matter represents “Man’s Search and Acquisition of Knowledge” that was represented in the story of Adam and Eve in the garden. This fact would have surely been a negative symbology to an overwhelming “Christian” population that Steve was planning to sell his personal computers to in the early 1980′s – So his line all those early years was that he put the “bite in the apple” so that it did not get confused with a tomato”
ENTP’s rarely make it to the top of corporate institutions unless they are heading their own entrepreneurial projects. Even if they do reach corporate success they often do not stay there to long. (Evident by Jobs ousting from his own company Apple many years ago) they are generally not driven by money or power, greed or control of the company (They do demand control of the “product”) – They are simply Pretenders capable of putting themselves into the shoes of the other 15 personality types at any given moment (they seem to get into their skins, and likwise are also known to get under the skins of their competition!)
The end result are products that are designed with efficiency and the widest possible use for good. Profits seem to be non-important to them, Quality, Competition and “envisioning the future” is what drives them. This is the paradox which corporate boards fail to understand and which was eventually rectified by apple with their rehire of Jobs after dismal profits without him. Quality, function and a constant look to the Future are key to Profits not only today but tomorrow…..
Milton Thomas X
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*ENTP’s are referred to as (Inventor’s) by Keirsey, yet this is an imperfect description, ENTP’s are best described as “Technical Marketers” because of their Extroversion which allows them to design products for the “External” world. It is the INTP’s (Architects) and INTJ’s (masterminds) and ENTJ’s and Others that truly get involved in the nuts and bolts of “Invention”.
Post Notes: The Lost Interviews – Steve Jobs, recently added to NETFLIX is an amazing interview of Steve Jobs that will leave no doubt to his personality being that of an ENTP. Absolutely not an ISTP as is often debated.
Typical few days of beard growth on a smiling ENTP, Steve Jobs
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on Jun 1 2013. Filed under eNtp - Inventor, NT Trinity Types.
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