Trauma wasn't Steve's strategy; it was a side-effect of his strategy. His strategy was demanding an unreasonable level of excellence and being indifferent to h

Trauma wasn't Steve's strategy; it was a side-effect of his strategy. His strategy was demanding an unreasonable level of excellence and being indifferent to how the people who worked for him might be impacted. Those that survived got to work at a company where everyone was extremely talented. People who couldn't stand the heat were free to work elsewhere. It's arrogant, but it did allow him to create a uniquely creative and effective environment. And keep in mind that if the Apple acquisition of NeXT hadn't worked out -- an acquisition that Steve was opposed to, I believe -- NeXT could have ended up in the dustbin of history, and there would be no OSX, iMac, iOS, iPod, or iPhone. So in many ways, the approach could have backfired, but in this case, it didn't.