Creatively Alike

The late Steve Jobs & Jim Henson Thought Different from most people but also Thought Alike each other. They created what people loved instead of what they yelled at out of frustration. Jim Henson was one of the innovators shown in Apple's tribute ad to innovative thinkers, similar to the homage to famous people on the Sergeant Pepper's album cover by The Beatles. The name of the Beatles record label helped to inspire the tech gadget company's name.

Visionaries often share similar ideas & ideals.
Steve Jobs passed away on October 5, 2011 after resigning exactly 6 weeks earlier from Apple Computers on August 24, 2011.
Jim Henson would have been 75 years old exactly one month after Jobs' resignation on September 24, 2011.
Both sold their entertainment to the Walt Disney Company.

Do what you love with a vision of what would be popular in the future instead of what everyone one else is doing now. This approach towards success produced innovative gadgets such as music players, phones & computing devices, television programming including Sesame Street or memorable commercials and family friendly movies.

People loved The Muppet Movies plus the numerous Pixar films instead of yelling at a product or creation out of frustration or that it either was difficult to understand or insulted their intelligence.

The downside is they both focused on their work to the point that they didn't want to bother others when dealing with health issues.

Think Different

"Here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently -- they're not fond of rules... You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can't do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do."

Apple's "Think Different" ad - 1998

It's better to be crazy by trying new things until figuring out what works, than insanely do the same thing repeatedly.

other comparisons

Both Steve Jobs and Albert Einstein had multiple sets of the same clothes to wear so they didn't have to waste time thinking of what to wear each day.

Working with dummies or puppets like Jim Henson does not indicate that one is not very smart. The inventor of an early prototype of an artificial heart was ventriloquist and voice of Tigger in the 1960s Winnie the Pooh movies, Paul Winchell. Ironically, the man who that further developed the idea, Robert Jarvic, is married to Marilyn vos Savant who is listed as having the world's highest IQ.

Similar approaches to life

"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life."

Steve Jobs - Stanford Commencement Address, 2005

"We're primarily a company of creative people, whose art we are helping to bring to the world. At the same time, we recognize that business enables art "to happen," and that business plays an essential role in communicating art to a broad audience. As both artists and businesspersons, we understand the value of both worlds, and so we bring them together in a way that facilitates the realization of our artistic vision."

Jim Henson - It's Not Easy Being Green And Other Things to Consider

"My model for business is The Beatles: They were four guys that kept each other's negative tendencies in check; they balanced each other. And the total was greater than the sum of the parts. Great things in business are not done by one person, they are done by a team of people."

Steve Jobs

"When you ask people to go outside of the mainstream, they take a risk. So there has to be some important reward for taking that risk or else they won't take it What we learned was that the reward can't be one and a half times better or twice as good. That's not enough. The reward has to be like three or four or five times better to take the risk to jump out of the mainstream."

Steve Jobs - Rolling Stone 1994

We should love people not for their similarities, but for their differences.

Brian Henson - Google Doodle blog September 23, 2011

"Oh well, they probably needed that stuff more than we did."

Jim Henson as related by Brian Henson regarding a car break-in - Google Doodle blog September 23, 2011

"It’ll be what this group can make, and if you changed any one of them, it would be a different movie."

Jim Henson as related by Brian Henson - Google Doodle blog September 23, 2011
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