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We don’t get a chance to do that many
things, and every one should be really
excellent. Because this is our life. |
Steve Jobs |
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"Why join the navy if you can be
a pirate?"
When Steve Jobs challenged
talented people with the
question, "Why join the navy if
you can be a pirate?", he was
not encouraging chaos or
rebellion for its own sake. He
was inviting people to think
differently, challenge
convention, and pursue
meaningful innovation.
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Be a Pirate – 7
Market-Leadership Lessons from
Steve Jobs
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"I
was worth over $1,000,000 when I
was 23, and over $10,000,000
when I was 24, and over
$100,000,000 when I was 25, and
it wasn’t that important because
I never did it for the money." ~
Steve Jobs
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Humble Beginnings
Steve Jobs,
founder of Apple Inc., was one of the most
successful entrepreneurs. His success story is
legendary.
His unwed mother decided to put him for adoption
immediately after Steve was born because he was
"an unexpected baby". |
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Steve Jobs
went to college but decided to
drop out because it was too
expensive. Recalling his time
there he said, "I didn’t have a
dorm room, so I slept on the
floor in friends’ rooms, I
returned coke bottles for the 5¢
deposits to buy food with, and I
would walk the 7 miles across
town every Sunday night to get
one good meal a week at the Hare
Krishna temple."
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Sometimes life hits you in the head with a
brick. Don't lose faith. |
Steve Jobs |
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Innovative Entrepreneur
At
20, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak
started a company in a garage on
April 1, 1976 after Steve saw a
computer Wozniak designed for
himself. Jobs named their
company – Apple in memory of a
happy summer he had spent as an
orchard worker in Oregon.
Later that year, the duo debuted
the Apple I at the Homebrew
Computer Club in Palo Alto,
California. A local store
offered to buy 50 machines and
to finance the production, the
duo had to sell their most
expensive possessions. Jobs sold
his Volkswagen van while Wozniak
sold his HP scientific
calculator.
The company's second product
called Apple
II
became such a hit that it is
credited to be the best selling
computer in the 1970s and early
1980s.
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Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how
it works. |
Steve Jobs |
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By
1982 however, his company sales
sagged in the face of
competition from IBM’s new PC.
Apple Inc. started working on a
new machine (‘insanely great’
according to Jobs) called the
Macintosh. Steve Jobs was
reported to commandeered the
project, ruthlessly pushing its
computer engineers and
flying a pirate flag above
the building where the team
worked.
Introduced in 1984, by 1986 the
Mac was a huge success.
After 10 years, starting from 2
kids working in a garage, Apple
computer had grown into a $2
billion dollar company with over
4000 employees.
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"You've got to
find what you love. The only way to do great work is to
love what you do.
If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of
the heart, you'll know when you find it."
~
Steve Jobs
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"Being the richest
man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me … Going to bed at night saying we’ve
done something wonderful… that’s what matters to me."
– Steve Jobs
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Steve Jobs Quotes |
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Do What You
Love To Do and Make a Difference
Do you want to spend the rest of
→
your life selling sugared
water or do you want a chance to
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change the world?
I want to put a ding in the universe.
Here’s to the
crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the
troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see
things differently – they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them,
disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you
can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the
human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones,
we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that
they can change the world, are
the ones who do.
You can’t connect the dots looking
forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to
trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to
trust in something – your
gut, destiny,
life,
karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has
made all the difference in my life.
Do Your Best
That's been one of my
mantras ‒
focus and
simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work
hard to get
your thinking
clean to make it simple. But
it's worth it in the end because once
you get there, you can move mountains.
We don’t get a chance to do that many things, and
every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life.
I’m convinced that about half of what separates the
successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure
perseverance.
Get rid of the crappy stuff and focus on the good stuff.
Our DNA is as a consumer company – for that individual
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customer
who’s voting thumbs up or thumbs down. That’s who we think about.
And we think that our job is to take responsibility for the complete
user experience. And if it’s not up to par, it’s our fault, plain
and simply.
People don’t want to just buy personal computers anymore. They want
to know what they can do with them, and we’re going to show people
exactly that.
Innovation
Innovation distinguishes between
a
leader and a follower.
We’re gambling on our vision,
and we’d rather do that than make ‘me-too’ products.
Creativity
is just connecting things.
Innovation is the ability to see
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change
as an
opportunity – not a threat.
I’ve always wanted to own and control the
primary
technology in everything we do.
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Innovation has nothing to do
with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac,
IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It's not about
money. It's about the people you have, how you're led, and how much
you get it.
To turn really interesting ideas and fledgling technologies into a
company that can continue to
innovate for years,
it
requires a lot of disciplines.
My experience has been that
creating a
compelling new technology is so much harder than you think it
will be that you're almost dead when you get to the other shore.
Sometimes
when you innovate, you make
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mistakes. It is best to
admit them quickly, and get on with improving your
other innovations.
New Product
Development
You can't just ask customers what they want and then try to give
that to them. By the time you get it built, they'll want something
new.
It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times,
people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.
Some people say you have to be a little crazy to buy a Mac. Well, in
that craziness we see genius and that’s who we make tools for.
Idea Management
So when a good idea comes, you know, part of my job is to move it
around, just see what different people think, get people talking
about it, argue with people about it, get ideas moving among that
group of 100 people,
get different people together to explore different aspects of it
quietly, and, you know – just explore things.
People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus
on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the
hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully.
I’m as proud of what we don’t do as I am of what we do...
Our leadership comes from saying 'no'
to 1,000 things to make sure we don’t get on the wrong track or try
to do too much....it’s only by saying 'no' that you can concentrate
on the things that are really important.
Quality
Be a yardstick of
quality . Some
people aren't used to an environment where
excellence is expected.
Quality is more important than quantity. One home run is much better
than two doubles.
Personal Life
I would trade all of my technology for an afternoon with
Socrates.
My girlfriend always laughs during sex – no matter what she's
reading. |
References:
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"Steve
Jobs on the New iPhone and How 'It Began With the Tablet'", Brad Spirrison
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Steve Jobs Inspirational Story
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TechCrunch40 Keynote Speakers: Humble Beginnings
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A Collection of Inspirational Steve Jobs Quotes on Life, Design, and Apple
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10 Golden Lessons from Steve Jobs, Ririan
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Steve Jobs Dies: Apple Chief Created Personal Computer, iPad, iPod, iPhone
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9 things you didn’t know about the life of Steve Jobs, Taylor
Hatmaker
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Steve Jobs: from parents' garage to world power, David Batty
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Steve Jobs and the 7 Rules of Success, Carmine Gallo
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An internal power struggle in Apple ended with
Jobs being stripped of his duties in 1985 and so he left the company
A tragedy? Not at all!
"It turned out that getting fired from Apple was
the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being
successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure
about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my
life," said Steve Jobs later on.
Steve Jobs is also a Former Chairman and CEO of
Pixar Animation Studios, which is popular for its production of animated films
such as The Incredibles and Toy Story. The firm was bought by
Walt Disney
Studios for $7.4 billion in stock, making Jobs the biggest individual
shareholder at Disney.
Steve Jobs did wonders as his company teetered
on the brink of collapse...
More
"I have one of the best jobs in the world. I
get to hang out with some of the most talented,
committed people around, and
together we get to play in this sandbox and build these cool products. Apple
is an incredibly collaborative company. You know how many committees we have
at Apple? Zero. We're
structured like a start-up. We're the biggest
start-up
on the planet. And we all meet once a week to discuss our business," said
Steve Jobs at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference.1
Most Admired By Great
Achievers
When asked "Who do they admire outside of your own
company?", all the three keynote speakers of TechCruch403 – David
Filo, Co-founder of Yahoo, Chad Hurley, Co-founder of YouTube, and Marc
Andreessen, Co-founder of Netscape – answered: "Steve Jobs"...
More
Do What You Love To Do and
Make a
Difference
In his
commencement address at Stanford University on June 12th 2005, Steve Jobs gave
young people two major advices:
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Steve Jobs' Resignation
Letter
(August 24, 2011)
To the Apple Board of Directors and the Apple
Community:
I have always said if there ever came a day when I
could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the
first to let you know.
Unfortunately, that day has come.
I hereby resign as CEO of Apple. I would like to
serve, if the Board sees fit, as Chairman of the Board, director and Apple
employee.
As far as my successor goes, I strongly recommend
that we execute our succession plan and name Tim Cook as CEO of Apple.
I believe Apple’s brightest and most innovative
days are ahead of it. And I look forward to watching and contributing to its
success in a new role.
I have made some of the best friends of my life at
Apple, and I thank you all for the many years of being able to work alongside
you.
Steve Jobs died on October 5, 2011
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