Steve Jobs was an innovator, a visionary, a boss, a friend, a computer nerd, and of course the founder and former CEO for Apple Inc. He was a man who is simply irreplaceable. While he is gone, Steve Jobs’ legacy will continue to live on in the Apple products and entrepreneurial values he has left on our world today.
In every aspect of his life, whether that was his beginning stages with Apple, his leadership with Pixar, or his take over with the music and smartphone industry, Steve Jobs impact has completely changed our society and has forever engraved his legacy on the business and tech world today. Yet despite his success, he also taught us the flaws of being human. Steve, as many of his coworkers would say, was not perfect. He was difficult to work with, uncommunicative, and simply down right rude. But even with those inherent flaws, they cannot deny the passion and dedication Steve had for his work. It is merely that vision that forces to ask questions of what it means to be a true learn, businessman and game changer.
So what makes Steve Jobs so special? What makes him so different than any other CEO? No, it was not the fact that he spoke and announced his new Apple products with the iconic black turtleneck and casual blue jeans. Rather it was the life lessons of a business leader that continue to inspire us today. From what we learned about his life, Steve Jobs taught us three key concepts of what it is to be truly inspirational.
Passion
For a person who has become a billionaire over time and has brought Apple from the brink of bankruptcy to now the number one company in the world, we have to wonder how a man, who was fired from his own company, was able to achieve such a task. Was it because of his pride, the idea of wanting to take back his child that was stolen and pillaged right out of his fingertips? Or was it because of his business ‘shark’ mentality of always fighting to be number one? While we can attribute this to this to a variety of his failures, the real answer is simply just his passion. When creating Apple’s first computer, the Apple I, Steve Jobs did not just want to make a computer. Rather he wanted to change the concept of using the computer. The elegance and functionality of his work has to be precise and effective. His overly obsessive behavior of improving his products time after time can be shown from his passion and motivation for perfection. That type of passion, the idea of always wanting to improve is something that cannot be taught. It is something that is bred by a vision and a goal. While that vision pushed him out of his own company, it also opened the gates to new ventures and of course the home welcoming for Apple’s new and innovative change on the tech, music, and phone industry.
Perspective
One mentality that Steve and Apple do for their company is that they do not look at their product as a way of making money. While at the time many computer and tech companies were using their brands to cash in on the fads for their buyers, Steve believed in looking beyond the horizon and creating a product that has never been imagined. He believed in solving a problem that the world did not see. By taking this approach, Steve and Apple simply took the perspective of the buyer. This allowed Apple to strategize how they were going to market their products and leverage a strong timeline for each new innovative product.
Confidence
After losing Apple in 1985, Steve was beginning to find the impact of his decision to resign. It was, as he has said in various interviews, the most public embarrassments of the last 30 years in business. Yet even with his failure, Steve picked himself up and got back to work following his passion with technology found in his work with NeXT computers and Pixar / Disney.
Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking.
This confidence and success allowed Steve to assume his rightful place at Apple and lead the company into a future it never could have imagined.
