[I wrote this upon the announcement of Jobs' retirement in August. Jobs reinvented himself, the companies he managed, the personal computer (which he can also get partial credit for inventing in the first place) the music business, and the telephone. To name just a few items.]

At National Review Online, Nick Schulz waxes elegiac about the career of Steve Jobs, describing him as “America’s Greatest Failure” and noting that “Glory is sometimes born of catastrophe.” It may be a distinctly American practice, to write eulogies at the end of a career rather than a life — and here’s hoping that even the career eulogies are premature, that Mr. Jobs finds a path to recovery from his illness and achieves another comeback or three before any real eulogies are written about him.

But as the mantle of Apple Computer CEO passes to new shoulders, it is a good time to reflect on the vivid and indelible mark that Steve Jobs has made on the world of business (and the world in general, for that matter.) Schulz concludes with these thoughts:

There’s a moral here for a Washington culture that fears failure too much. In today’s Washington, large banks aren’t permitted to fail; nor are large auto firms. Next up will be too-big-to-fail hospital systems. Steve Jobs is a reminder that failure is a good and necessary thing. And that sometimes the greatest glories are born of catastrophe.

I don’t entirely disagree with that sentiment, but I think there’s more to be said. Most of the “catastrophes” that Jobs encountered were self-inflicted. And his failures are interesting and instructive precisely because they were followed by subsequent, even more spectacular, successes. Jobs has consistently changed the game by reinventing himself and the companies he managed.

Let’s look at three principles of reinvention reflected in the career of Steve Jobs.

1. First, invent yourself.

Steve Jobs was a hacker, a phone phreaker, and by many accounts something of a hippie in the early days. He was adored, feared, and despised at Apple Computer, the company he co-founded in 1976 with Steve Wozniak. With the Macintosh, he wanted to bring a product to market that was “insanely great” — words that had no small applicability to his own good self. By the time he was fired by former Pepsico CEO John Sculley, the man he personally recruited to run the “business side” of his business, he was larger than life — a man not yet 30 who had already accomplished far more than most of us will ever do.

In a sense, Apple had to let Jobs go because there was just too much of him. He was an overwhelming presence. When he set about to reinvent himself the first time, he had plenty of material to work with.

2. “Stay hungry. Stay foolish.”

Some of you may recognize these words from Stewart Brands’ Whole Earth Catalog, or from Jobs’ quoting them in a famous commencement address he gave at Stanford in 2005. (If you’re not, follow the link and read the address. It will tell you far more about Steve Jobs than I could ever hope to.)

Jobs left Apple, but he stayed hungry. In 1985 he started a new company with as defiant a name as you can imagine: NeXT. It was not the massive large-scale success that Apple was, but its technology was extremely influential — so much so that Apple Computer ultimately came calling and bought Jobs out in order to acquire what would become the basis for a a completely revamped Macintosh operating system. That purchase brought Jobs back in as a consultant to Apple, and soon after as reinstated CEO.

Jobs also stayed foolish. While running NeXT, he bought an interesting little computer graphics outfit from George Lucas, a company that today we all know as PIXAR. Whatever his business reasons for making that purchase, there can be no doubt that a primary part of the attraction was just how cool PIXAR was. It was insanely great, and he was as committed to that ideal as ever. (Of course, we should all suffer from that sort of “foolishness.” Jobs later sold the company to Disney for $7 billion, becoming Disney’s largest shareholder in the process.)

3. Put everything on the line.

Steve Jobs’ reinvention of himself from wunderkind-turned-charlatan/outcast to Triumphant Reconqueror is as inspiring a story as you will find in the annals of American business. But he had only begun to reinvent. We all know about how the iPod led to the iPhone and the iPad — and what tremendous game-changers each of these has been — but it all started with the iMac. Jobs dared to reinvent to the Macintosh itself, making it even more insane and greater than ever.

It’s important to note that the Mac of 1997 was a far cry from the design masterpiece that Jobs introduced in 1984, and was in significant need of reinvention. But that he would stake his company and reclaimed reputation on making a big splash with the very technology that had, in a sense, been his initial undoing…

That took guts.

It takes courage to reinvent yourself. It takes passion. And perhaps it takes a little bit of hunger and little bit of foolishness. Any of us who have experienced failure, or are experiencing it now, should remember that. Steve Jobs has changed our world in many ways, and has shown us that failure need never be the last word. For both of those things, we should be profoundly grateful.