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Steve jobs 1955-2011
the legendary CEO of APPLE
By Erik Sherman | October 6, 2011
http://www.bnet.com/blog/technology-business/steve-jobs-and-his-magical-business-decisions/13144?promo=713&tag=nl.e713
Here’s a look at some of the best moves Jobs ever made — decisions that weren’t just sound, but ground-breaking. Choices that most of the smart business set wouldn’t have taken. That’s what makes them something more than savvy. It makes them great.
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steve jobs big lesson - stay hungry stay foolish
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/steve-jobs-big-lesson-stay-hungry-stay-foolish/59943?tag=nl.e539
By Larry Dignan | October 5, 2011, 6:17pm PDT
Steve Jobs has passed away and what you’ll find on these pages and many Web pages like them are planned storylines about the life Apple’s co-founder.
That’s life in the news business. You plan ahead. Now that we’re posting stories, video packages and other pieces of content it all just feels off. Like way off.
Why? You don’t quite know what your reaction will be until the moment actually comes. We all knew Jobs’ day would come. We also knew it would come soon. That’s why the thoughts that emerged when Jobs stepped down as CEO came out like obits. Few of use wanted to totally acknowledge it, but Jobs’ fate was obvious when he stepped down as CEO.
Those CEO stories primarily focused on the business side of Jobs. His first tour at Apple. The Next diversion. Pixar. And then the rebirth at Apple, which appears to be set up for a nice post Jobs run. Frankly, setting Apple up to thrive beyond his tenure may turn out to be Jobs’ greatest business accomplishment.
When Jobs stepped down as CEO I chose to look at his ride through the lens of Apple products. It’s was a natural path to take. Now that Jobs has passed it isn’t.
Whether you love or hate Apple—or fall somewhere in between—it’s hard not to acknowledge that Jobs was a brilliant man. He’s also a man that we don’t really know a lot about. But he’s also a man that changed a lot of lives.
Here’s what stuck out about Jobs for me:
Innovative.
Quirky.
Stubborn as hell.
Controlling.
Great leader.
An artist eye for design with an engineer’s brain.
Amazing legacy.
“Stay hungry, stay foolish.”
I’d argue that Jobs is my generation’s Walt Disney. He entertained. He delighted. And he built something enduring. Jobs was a disruptive force. Given the Disney comparison, it’s a bit ironic that Jobs wound up being Disney’s largest shareholder via the Pixar acquisition.
More importantly, Jobs loved what he did. And pursued that love with a passion. In a 2005 Stanford commencement speech, Jobs said:
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
For now, Jobs’ passing is garnering a bevy of statements—mostly canned like a lot of the stories tonight. But all you really need to know about Jobs and what he left behind can be found in his Stanford commencement speech from 2005 (full text). As you ponder Jobs it’s worth adapting some of these life lessons for your days ahead.
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http://thedailynewsonline.com/lifestyles/article_813a9e42-f162-11e0-86f9-001cc4c03286.html
Posted: Saturday, October 8, 2011 12:02 am | Updated: 12:06 am, Sat Oct 8, 2011.
TED ANTHONY,AP National Writer
CUPERTINO, Calif. (AP) - In dark suit and bowtie, he is a computing-era carnival barker - eyebrows bouncing, hands gesturing, smile seductive and coy and a bit annoying. It's as if he's on his first date with an entire generation of consumers. And, in a way, he is.
http://thedailynewsonline.com/lifestyles/article_813a9e42-f162-11e0-86f9-001cc4c03286.html
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6 Lessons We Could Learn from Steve Jobs
6 Lessons We Could Learn from Steve Jobs
By Margaret Heffernan | October 6, 2011
Tracking the achievements of Steve Jobs isn’t a difficult thing to do. They’re big, public and - especially in technology - remarkably long lasting. More tricky but, I think, more interesting, is eliciting from those achievements the lessons we could learn from his successes if we tried.
1. Style is Content
From the outset, Jobs and Apple believed in style: in fonts, in graphics, in industrial design and in marketing. It’s easy to under-estimate how eccentric this was at the time - and how eccentric it remains today. While most organizations believe that style is the exclusive purview of marketing, few achieve it even there. Most hardware and software remains remarkably clunky, ugly or simply derivative. (The Kindle is hideous; the Fire a pale imitation.) When I first started working in technology 15 years ago, style was dismissed as frivolous and that’s the status it still holds in most companies today. Anyone who imagines that Apple’s success derives entirely from what’s inside the box (and there are more than a few) has missed a very obvious point.
Conventional wisdom divides thinking into the left brain and the right brain. The left is all systematic, rational, linear while the right is more emotional and creative. What Jobs demonstrated was that success lies not in emphasizing one over the other but in bringing them together. The physical representation of this was clear when he took over Pixar. The new campus planned 3 separate buildings: for creatives, for producers and for business people. He insisted that they be brought under one roof, with toilets at the center - because that’s where everyone meets and talks.
2. Patience Beats Speed
For all that Apple is known for fast product development, the truth is that Jobs was very good at waiting. After his return to Apple in 1997, when the company teetered on the brink of bankruptcy, he did what any smart CEO would do: slashed product lines (15 desktop models to 1) cut software and hardware engineers, eliminated peripherals, reduced inventory and retailers and moved most manufacturing offshore. There is nothing brilliant about this; it’s textbook stuff. But asked in 1998, by Richard Rummelt, what he was going to do next, in order to move Apple beyond its fragile niche position, Jobs had a gutsy answer: “I am going to wait for the next big thing.”
Wait? In a technology business? That took courage. Of course, once he’d figured out what the next big thing was, Jobs was methodical and patient - again - in putting in place everything he’d need to take advantage of the seismic shift in the environment when the U.S. market moved to broadband.
It’s also worth remembering that, during the three years he did this, he was remorselessly hammered by industry analysts not one of whom understood what he was up to.
3. Drama Trumps Romance
Jobs’s product launches were famed for their drama. But one thing they didn’t offer was romance. The products did what they said they’d do. Marketing commentary around them didn’t promise fantasies, illusions or daydreams. Apple promoted its products but didn’t hype them. This may seem a lackluster quality but it built trust. Apple said its products were easy to use not because (like many of its competitors) it hoped that was true, or because it was true for the PhD engineers who’d invented them, but because it was true. It seems peculiar to celebrate a company for truth in advertising but that’s one reason why Apple customers, once smitten, stayed loyal.
4. Nothing Beats a Good Mistake
Jobs’s career isn’t without its mis-steps. Losing control of Apple was the biggest and most obvious but there were plenty of minor slip ups along the way. The suicides at the Foxconn plant that manufactures iPhones was just one of these. But Jobs didn’t try to deny that they had taken place or that they mattered. He was swift to point out that Apple’s scrutiny of its suppliers was more rigorous than most - but he still moved quickly to understand what was going on and try to find remedies.
Every company makes mistakes. But, treated right, they can be treasure troves of learning. Moreover, people loved Jobs not because he didn’t make mistakes - but because he learned from them.
5. Technology Isn’t All About Youth
In the age of fast companies, built not to last, Apple offered ample proof that you can be innovative and cool after the age of 25. Experience, know how and skills counted for something. While the products were cool, they weren’t all built by pre-adolescents oblivious to the constraints and needs of normal human beings. That Jobs continued to be as innovative in his 50s as he had been in his 20s is something most companies should take time to consider at length.
6. Business Doesn’t Have to Be Bad
Earlier this week I was teaching a class of new MBA students. A strikingly international group, they came from Thailand, India, Korea, Colombia, Russia, Canada, Taiwan, China and the U.S. I asked them who their heroes were. As usual, the list included their parents, various heads of state and Nelson Mandela. But topping the list - regardless of age or nationality - was Steve Jobs. More than anyone else alive, he was the person who inspired their love of business and their desire to try their hands at it.
In an age when the streets are full of anger and violence at the havoc wreaked by one part of the business world, that there is such an inspirational figure as Jobs is important. We need smart men and women, young and old, to have high ambitions for the world of work, someone who believed passionately and articulated brilliantly how much good business can achieve. Now that Jobs is gone, who can fail to be concerned that no one else adequately represents his rich synthesis of intellect, imagination and passion?
The lessons we could learn from Steve Jobs aren’t all that remarkable. Many of them contain wisdom that we already know — we just don’t apply it. Why not? Is it that we lack courage? Or is it that we find it hard to believe that tenets so simple can prove so effective? Surely that’s the moral of the Apple story: there is genius in simplicity. But simple is hard.
