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A Useful Speech

Jeevan Sivasubramaniam Posted by Jeevan Sivasubramaniam, Managing Director, Editorial, Berrett-Koehler Publishers Inc.



Most people can't recall their college commencement speaker's speech -- and with good reason. Commencement speeches tend to be rather uninspiring and impractical. Inevitably there is some discussion of the harsh world the graduates are entering and how they are equipped now to really make some changes and so should use their knowledge for the betterment of blah, blah, blah...

Then there are those monumental speeches like this one that Apple CEO Steve Jobs (who never graduated from college) gave at Stanford University in 2005. Most people don't remember the commencement speech from their graduation, but almost everyone who has seen this speech remembers it vividly because Jobs used the power of story and his personal life to give some real advice.

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