Steve Wozniak on Fun, Risk and Building a Culture Where Ideas Can Breathe
A Feisworld reflection on my fireside chat with the cofounder of Apple
Talking with Steve Wozniak feels like sitting with the joyful inner kid of the tech world.
Yes, he helped start Apple. Yes, he shaped the personal computer era.
But what comes through most is not ego or legacy. It is curiosity, kindness and a genuine love for making things that delight people.
Steve happened to be my very first moderation guest for Women Leaders Association in 2021. As someone who has studied Computer Science and Math in college and continued to use Apple products every day, my admiration and curiosity for Steve was through the roof. He was different than what I had imagined: someone who is so friendly and almost childlike. He talked about his work and travel like a guy next door!
This post is my reflection on that conversation and what leaders, teams and creators can borrow from Woz to build workplaces that feel alive, not just productive.
Fun is not an extra. It is part of the job.
Woz grew up as the math and science kid who also loved pranks. He and his friends would use electronics to pull clever jokes on people who did not understand the tech. That mix of brains and mischief never left him.
When he talks about work, fun is always present. Especially for engineers who spend hours deep in complex problems, he believes that laughter, joking and play are essential.
At Hewlett Packard in the 70s, he remembers a culture where people could:
- Solve serious problems
- Go to lunch and joke with friends
- Come back recharged and excited to work with the same people they were laughing with
Later, when Woz taught kids about computers, he designed his classes around curiosity and fun programs that would amaze parents, instead of plodding through a rigid textbook schedule. He wanted students to feel the joy of making something playful and unexpected.
For Woz, fun is not something that distracts from productivity. It is what makes long term focus sustainable.
Feisworld Takeaway
If you lead a team, ask yourself: Where does play live in our work day
That might mean quick joke filled check ins, playful coding challenges, small experiments that are just for learning or mini creative contests. You do not need to sacrifice seriousness to make space for humor. You need both.
Innovation starts in feelings, not slide decks
When Woz describes his best inventions, he does not start with business value.
He starts with how it felt.
As a teenager, he would lie in bed trying to reduce the number of chips in a computer design, then wake up with a better solution. Not because a manager demanded it, but because the puzzle itself was thrilling.
He would build projects that had no obvious commercial purpose, just to show off to friends. A clever game. A system that did something surprising. A design that looked impossible based on existing books.
His favorite reward was not money. It was another engineer looking at his design and saying:
How did you even think of that?!
He also shared that many inventors in the United States National Inventors Hall of Fame behaved the same way. They worked alone, driven by an internal question:
Could this be possible? Can I build this?
Even before a company or market was involved.
Innovation, in his world, is emotional. It begins with wonder and a stubborn need to see an idea become real.
Feisworld Takeaway
If you only measure innovation as a business outcome, you will miss its beginning.
Ask your people what they are curious about. Ask what projects they would start if there were no quarterly reviews. Notice what they tinker with on their own time. That emotional spark is where the real disruptive ideas often start.
Reflecting on Xiang Li Art
Another example is my mom Xiang Li, who’s been an artist her whole life with a 37 years spent working as a restoration and reproduction artist at the Forbidden City in Beijing, China. When she finally retired at the age of 60, she began to attempt the most challenging collection of her life time: the Chinese Empress collection. This collection features over 200 empresses throughout Chinese history, painted on silk using gemstone colors. Each painting is at least 36 x 72 inches in size and took her months to complete, working 8+ hrs a day. It was not a commercial project, few people took notice at first. Asian art still isn’t popularized compared to traditional European art. She did for the emotion, and for the love she has for women in history whose stories were rarely preserved and celebrated. She needed to change that using her incredible artistic skills people can’t ignore but pay attention to.
Fast forward 12 years later, her hard work is paying off as Harvard Museums, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Harvard University and other major institutions took notice and invited her to over two dozens showcases since 2024. Exhibiting Xiang Li’s Chinese Empresses has become a significant part my creative life and so many others who work with me here at Feisworld.
Failure is a teacher, not a verdict
Woz does not romanticize failure, and he does not fear it either.
He told a simple story. One day he had terrible coffee. The takeaway? Next time, he would be more careful with coffee in that context. Lesson learned.
Most of his early projects were personally defined successes because his bar was not external.
For him, success meant:
- Did I complete the project?
- Did it work as intended?
- Did I learn something useful?
Later, a startup he worked on did not meet its original goals for cost, size and battery life. Instead of spiraling, he and the team looked for other uses, other markets and other clients who could use the technology in different ways.
Even with missed concerts or events in personal life, he reframes quickly. If a concert is cancelled or life gets in the way, he reminds himself that something else meaningful will fill that time and that the experience can often come back in another form later.
Failure, for Woz, is an input. Not an identity.
Feisworld Takeaway
When something fails on your team, resist the urge to treat it as a character judgment.
Ask instead
– What did we learn?
– How can we reuse any part of this work?
– What will we do differently next time?
If you normalize this kind of reflection, people will stay creative rather than cautious.
The truth is, what you see here on Feisworld is only a fraction of what we’ve worked on in the past ten years. So many projects went unnoticed, courses didn’t sell as expected, and new offered that failed to resonate. But my then-producer, now head of content German and I learned so much along the way. We didn’t fear failure, and continued to build the Feisworld brand together and deliver consistently.
Dreaming big by choosing happiness over status
One of the most powerful moments in our conversation was when Woz described reading about a famous executive who dealt daily in huge corporate deals. He asked himself a very direct question.
On the day I die, would I want that life?
His answer was no.
He would rather remember a bike trip, a prank pulled with friends, or a small act that brought joy to others. From that moment, he decided that the real measure of his life was happiness, not status.
He came up with his own formula.
Smiles minus frowns.
He actively worked to remove frowns by shifting his perspective when things did not go his way. Life is life, he would tell himself. The goal was not to control everything, but to respond without being crushed.
This mindset shaped how he dreamed big.
When he built the Apple II, his dream was not to be a superstar founder. His dream was that young people and families could have their own computers and use them for games, learning and fun.
He wanted to be part of a revolution that made technology personal, joyful and accessible.
Steve Jobs, in contrast, was driven by a desire to be an important figure in history. He wanted to build a large company. Together, these two motivations matched. Woz wanted engineering greatness. Jobs wanted scale. They each got what they were seeking.
Feisworld Takeaway
Before chasing a bigger career move or company goal, pause and ask:
What does a good life actually mean to me?
You might find that more joy, more time for family, more creative freedom or more impact on others matters more than titles. Let that answer shape which big dreams you pursue and which you can let go.
Listening to the people closest to the work
Woz is fiercely loyal to the role of engineer. He believes many organizations miss their most valuable ideas because they are not listening to the people who work closest to the product.
He has seen many cases where:
- Engineers have powerful ideas for new features or entirely new products
- A single level of management says no
- The idea never reaches leaders who could see its potential
He remembers Hewlett Packard having a principle that any engineer could approach senior leaders directly with ideas. He loved that. It bypassed the risk of middle management blocking innovation.
He believes companies should have roles and processes that intentionally look for disruptive ideas. For example, he imagines a chief disruption officer whose job is to seek out internal ideas that could reshape the industry.
This person would ideally report directly to the board, not the chief executive, because disruptive thinking is often in tension with short term profit focus.
He also values small secret projects. Skunkworks teams with autonomy and a bit of budget can explore ideas quickly without being smothered by process.
Feisworld Takeaway
If you want innovation from your teams, ask yourself:
How easy is it for an entry level engineer or individual contributor to get a bold idea heard by someone with decision power?
You can introduce listening sessions, internal idea fairs, direct channels to senior leaders or rotating innovation councils. The exact mechanism matters less than the message.
We are listening. Your ideas matter.
Building for humans, not just for specs
Woz lit up when we talked about how Apple thought about products.
He acknowledged that Apple has rarely won by having the longest spec sheet. Instead, the company has excelled at making life easier for people using their devices.
Examples Woz pointed to:
- Touch ID that uses a three dimensional fingerprint so you do not type passwords over and over
- Tap to pay with your watch or phone in a way that feels natural and instant
- Graphic interfaces that replaced memorizing command lines
- Bringing color arcade style games into the home with software rather than massive hardware
He pointed out that many competitors had similar features earlier in theory. For instance, some phones had contactless payment long before Apple, but the steps were so clunky that almost no one used them.
Apple obsessed over the flow. Could a person pay without unlocking the phone, opening an app and entering more codes? It had to feel effortless.
For Woz, this is a core value:
Work harder as a company so the customer can have an easy life.
Feisworld Takeaway
When you design products, services or even internal tools, ask:
Would a tired, distracted person be able to use this without thinking very hard?
If the answer is no, you still have work to do.
Empathy at the design level is a competitive advantage.
Recognizing success in ways that actually matter
When I asked about celebrating wins, Woz did not jump to fancy offsites or elaborate programs. He came back to something very simple.
Engineers feel honored when other engineers understand and appreciate their work.
For him, the best celebration is when a peer listens to how someone:
- Reduced complexity in a design
- Found a clever new method
- Made something work that should not have been possible
Yes, he acknowledges the value of formal awards and bonuses. In fact, over time he has come to appreciate recognition from universities and organizations more than he did when he was younger.
But as motivation, he believes intrinsic drive is much stronger than external awards. The love of building and the pride in a clever solution are what keep great engineers going.
He imagines a powerful practice leaders rarely follow.
What if senior leaders personally sat down, one by one, with people receiving key awards and asked them to walk through exactly what they built and why it matters? That kind of engaged attention feels very different from a generic applause moment.
Feisworld Takeaway
Try this experiment:
Instead of only sending praise emails, schedule short conversations with team members who did outstanding work and ask them to teach you what they did.
You do not need to fully understand every technical detail. The act of listening and asking curious questions is itself a powerful form of recognition.
What risk really looked like for Woz
People sometimes imagine that starting Apple involved unimaginable risk. Woz tells a quieter version.
He sold his treasured Hewlett Packard calculator.
Steve Jobs sold his van.
They both still had the same day to day lives they had before. They did not have large savings accounts or houses on the line. Their biggest risk was not financial ruin. It was whether the idea would work.
More importantly, Woz was deeply loyal to Hewlett Packard. He believed in the company and its values and wanted to stay there as an engineer for life.
Because of that, he did something many founders do not.
He brought his computer design to Hewlett Packard first.
He demoed it.
He explained how it could work.
He asked for the opportunity to build it there.
They turned him down multiple times for reasons that made sense in their business context. They sold instruments to engineers, not fun machines for families. In hindsight, Woz believes it was fortunate. If they had accepted, they likely would have built the wrong kind of product anyway.
After that, he felt clear about moving forward with Jobs.
He had been honest.
He had honored his loyalty.
He was ready to build something new.
Feisworld Takeaway
When you face what feels like a big risk, ask two questions
1. What am I actually risking in concrete terms?
2. Have I been honest with the people who rely on me now?
Sometimes the real risk is much smaller than the story you are telling yourself. And sometimes the bigger risk is not acting on an idea that clearly will not leave you alone.
Creating space for deep work and private curiosity
Woz is very clear about one thing.
There is no single personality type for creativity. But his own creative style has always been introverted.
As a kid, his happiest place was alone in his room with a book or a notebook, studying and designing.
He built computers on paper before he could afford any parts. He loved solo concentration.
Later in life, when he missed that feeling of intense building, he quietly bought a small computer board and taught himself new languages and systems again. No fanfare. Just pure enjoyment of learning.
He acknowledges that not everyone creates this way. Some people need group energy. Others need physical movement. Others need short bursts followed by breaks.
The common factor: He believes real innovation needs room to breathe. That means time, trust and a bit of privacy. Not every creative thought can be born in a meeting.
Feisworld Takeaway
In your team or company, consider how you can protect time for real thinking.
That might look like meeting free mornings, quiet rooms, solo project time, or no expectation of instant responses in chat. Encourage people to notice how they work best and to shape some of their schedule around that when possible.
My closing reflection
Talking with Woz reminded me that innovation culture is not built only with slogans and strategies. It is built through a thousand small moments.
A joke between colleagues.
A manager who actually listens.
A leader who is willing to share credit.
An engineer who stays up late chasing a better way to solve a problem just because it feels beautiful.
As AI and automation keep reshaping how we work, the human parts that Woz embodies become even more important.
Joy
Honesty
Curiosity
Loyalty
Play
Those are not soft qualities. They are the soil that allows the next generation of ideas to grow.
If you take one thing from Woz, let it be this
Make room for fun and genuine happiness in your work life. The rest of your innovation strategy will be much easier to build on top of that.
