Steve Jobs, a hero of mine Steve Jobs, a visionary in electronics gives Stanford University a Wow Moment Being a closet tech nerd, I knew Mr. Jobs would eventually give Apple his walking papers. Here is a guy why had vision in what he did and turned around a company that was on the brink of disaster about 12 years ago. Being in health care, we sure could use a mind like Steves because the system is like Apple in 1998, bloated, failing to live up to expectation and the product was wildly expensive compared to what it produced. Faced with his own potential mortality in 2005, he was diagnosed with a curable form of pancreatic cancer. He gave this commencement speech. You have got to read this because it speaks to all of us. Few of us push for greatness because we simply become part of the fabric of society, rather than helping to move society in a better direction. In essence, we are cogs in the machine that come with birth and go with death or as Disney put it, “The Great Circle of Life” His speech beckons us to aspire to something greater than ourselves and be true to ourselves. He mentions the time he was fired from the company he founded at the age of 30, only to creat Pixar and also NEXT, a software company later purchased by Apple which has much to do with the success of their current computer and its operating system. Personally, Steve, you are a Hero to me (and if I could, I would dedicate my book Cheating Mother Nature to you) and you are truly a visionary. Read his speech here. You will agree it sends a wonderful message I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories. The first story is about connecting the dots. I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out? It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903596904576520690515394766.html#ixzz1W8vczHlA