Geoffrey Cain

Geoffrey Cain is an award-winning author, correspondent, and biographer who sits down with world leaders, tech founders, and dissidents. His latest book, Steve Jobs in Exile: The Untold Story of NeXT and the Remaking of an American Visionary (Portfolio / Penguin Random House, 2026), chronicles the twelve wilderness years that turned Jobs from an ousted founder into the leader who saved Apple. The book draws on more than one hundred original interviews and previously unopened archives. The Wall Street Journal called it “a study in individual magnetism and group dynamics: how humans master their emotions and tame their demons and learn to work together-or don’t.”

His previous book, Samsung Rising, was longlisted for the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year, and The Perfect Police State was named NPR’s “Book of the Day.” He appears in The Wall Street Journal, Time, The Economist, and Wired and has been featured on CNN and Bloomberg TV. He also advises executives and government officials on innovation.

Categories: Author and Writer, Leadership, New to AEISpeakers

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The Reinvention Playbook: The Middle Is the Message

Every reinvention story gets told as a clean arc: rise, fall, triumphant return. The real story is the middle, the stretch of years when a leader fails in public and must rebuild in private. Drawing on original reporting inside companies like Apple and Samsung, and the lives of the people who led them, including new access to private files and videos showing Steve Jobs, Geoffrey Cain shows how a company and a leader can reinvent themselves.

For: Leadership development, executive retreats, organizations in transformation.

The Shock Your Company Should See Coming: Why disruption looks like bad luck, but almost never is

Most corporate crises feel sudden from the inside, but obvious from the outside. The difficult press, the shareholder campaign, the competitor that emerged out of nowhere—all were visible, but were patterns leadership overlooked. Geoffrey Cain has spent two decades inside companies at the moment they broke down. He shows how to spot the shock early and move before it takes control.

For: C-suite, strategy teams, boards, companies in volatile markets.

The New Map of Power: How AI and a changing world are redrawing the rules of business

The rules that governed global business for thirty years are being rewritten right now. AI is changing how we work, supply chains are on the move, and advantage is shifting between regions and technologies faster than most corporate strategies can keep up with. Geoffrey Cain has spent his career reporting on these forces around the world and in Silicon Valley. He helps leaders read the new landscape: where the risk sits, where the openings are, and how to position a company for the decade ahead.

For: strategy offsites, industry conferences, leadership teams planning ahead.

Books

Steve Jobs in Exile: The Untold Story of NeXT and the Remaking of an American Visionary

Steve Jobs in Exile: The Untold Story of NeXT and the Remaking of an American Visionary

In 1985, Steve Jobs—the brilliant, volatile founder of Apple Computer—walked out of his company's headquarters, driven from the very corporation he had created. What happened next would transform not only his life and career, but the future of technology itself.

You can purchase this book here

Samsung Rising: The Inside Story of the South Korean Giant That Set Out to Beat Apple and Conquer Tech

Samsung Rising: The Inside Story of the South Korean Giant That Set Out to Beat Apple and Conquer Tech

Based on years of reporting on Samsung for The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, and Time, from his base in South Korea, and his countless sources inside and outside the company, Geoffrey Cain offers a penetrating look behind the curtains of the biggest company nobody in America knows.

You can purchase this book here

The Perfect Police State: An Undercover Odyssey into China's Terrifying Surveillance Dystopia of the Future

The Perfect Police State: An Undercover Odyssey into China's Terrifying Surveillance Dystopia of the Future

A riveting investigation into how a restive region of China became the site of a nightmare Orwellian social experiment—the definitive police state—and the global technology giants that made it possible Blocked from facts and truth, under constant surveillance, surrounded by a hostile alien police force: Xinjiang’s Uyghur population has become cursed, oppressed, outcast.

You can purchase this book here

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