Achievements
Steve Jobs is the co-founder and CEO of Apple Inc. He is also the founder of NeXT Computer (bought by Apple in 1996) and co-founder and former CEO of Pixar Animation Studios, which has created such blockbusters as Toy Story, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, Cars and others. In 2006 Pixar was purchased by Walt Disney Company for $7.4 billion; the deal made Jobs the largest individual shareholder of Disney stock and Steve now serves on its board of directors. Steve Jobs is now considered a leading figure in both the computer and entertainment industries.
Career Highlights
While Steve was in Homestead High School (California), he built electronic devices. Once, he wanted for his projects some rare parts made by Hewlett-Packard; so he wrote to William Hewlett, co-founder of the HP, and asked for the parts to be sent to him. Hewlett responded by giving Jobs a summer job in a Hewlett-Packard factory, where he found himself together with Steve Wozniak.
When twenty-one-year-old Jobs saw a computer that Wozniak had designed for his own use, he convinced Wozniak to start a company to market the computer. Apple Computer was founded as a partnership on April 1, 1976. In December 1980, with a successful IPO, Apple became a public company, making Jobs a multi-millionaire before he was 30.
In 1983, Jobs lured John Sculley away from Pepsi-Cola, to serve as Apple's CEO. On January 24, 1984, Steve introduced the Apple Macintosh, the first commercially successful computer with a graphical user interface. But at the end of May 1985 – following an internal power struggle and an announcement of significant layoffs – Sculley relieved Jobs of his duties as head of the Macintosh division.
In 1986, finding himself sidelined by the company he had founded, Jobs sold all but one of his shares in Apple and created NeXT, a computer platform development company, investing $15 million of his own money. But in 1993, after having sold only 50,000 machines, NeXT transitioned fully to software development. Also in 1986 Jobs bought a computer animation studio from George Lucas, saving it from dissolution. The first film produced by the independent partnership named Pixar Animation Studios, Toy Story (1995), brought fame to the studio. Over the next ten years the company would produce another several box-office hits.
In 1996, Apple bought NeXT for $402 million, bringing Jobs back. In 1997 he became Apple's interim CEO and worked for several years with an annual salary of $1. In 2000 the company made him permanent CEO of Apple. Steve Jobs sparked resurgence in the company with products like the colorful iMac computer, the iPod portable music player, iTunes digital music software, and the iTunes Store. Jobs persuaded every major record company to sell Apple the rights to market their songs on the Internet, even though the companies were suspicious of the Internet, viewing it as a haven for thieves of their music. By 2004 iPod was the world's dominant portable music player, with iTunes owning 70 percent of the market of downloaded music.
Leadership Experience
Steve Jobs is responsible for building Apple Computer twice, as well as for rescuing Pixar Animation Studios and turning it into one of the world's most successful motion picture studios. He also built NeXT Computer, a good idea that did not catch on. He was a hands-on manager, who studied even the minutest details of his products, with the heart and eye of an artist. His insistence on high-quality, good-looking products struck a chord with many people who appreciated the beauty of Apple products, resulting in such fabulous successes as the Macintosh computer and the iPod portable music system.
While Jobs was a persuasive and charismatic evangelist for Apple, some of his employees from that time had described him as an erratic and tempestuous manager. Fortune once noted that he "is considered one of Silicon Valley's leading egomaniacs”. But since his second coming to Apple his management style has radically changed from what it was in 1985. In fact, he seems to relish other people's ideas; perhaps his work at Pixar has improved his ability to work with the creative people. He wisely surrounds himself with top-notch executives in all the key corporate positions. He has transformed the corporate culture into one in which employees wanted to come to work and have a mission to change the world for the better. Moreover, Steve Jobs brought the fun back into tinkering with electronics.
Background Links
The Second Coming of Steve Jobs, Alan Deutschman, 2001
iCon: Steve Jobs, The Greatest Second Act In The History Of Business, Jeffrey S. Young, William L. Simon, 2005
If He's So Smart...Steve Jobs, Apple, and the Limits of Innovation, Fast Company
