Business Lessons from Steve Jobs
November 06, 2011, By Mark Meissner 0 comments
As most of us know, Steve Jobs, the former CEO and co-founder of Apple, recently passed away from complications related to pancreatic cancer. Whether you love him or hate him (or Apple products in general), during his lifetime, he became one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the world, and his company, Apple, transformed the way we are able to communicate by creating entirely new industries and markets. His business decisions can teach us a lot about how to further our own careers.
Henry Ford once said, "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." Steve jobs didn't believe in focus groups because he believed he knew what people wanted, even though they didn't know yet—much the same way Henry Ford knew people would want his automobiles rather than faster horses. Jobs was passionate about electronics from a young age and sought to make products that truly made people's lives better. He wanted to provide the tools to educators to be able to better teach and scientists to take their research further than they could dream.
Jobs used resources around him to create what he envisioned; many would be amazed to learn he wasn't even a programmer or engineer, nor did he graduate from college; he simply had brilliant ideas and found the people who could make it happen. He was a master at inspiring others, bringing new ideas to friends and colleagues and getting them to buy into his vision. He envisioned personal computers that everyone could use, and convinced his friend and electronic hack, Steve Wozniak to build the very first one. Apple was soon born with funding from an Angel investor. His passion for electronics and his ability to find people to buy into his ideas by working for him and or investing in him is one of the many factors that played a huge part in his success.
Apple wasn't where Jobs made his fortune though, rather when he faced his greatest adversity after being ousted from his position at Apple which ended in his ultimately resigning, he went on to make a fortune with his eventual purchase of what would become Pixar, the animated film producer, that was purchased for mere millions and sold for several billion dollars to Walt Disney. He was ultimately rehired at Apple to run the company after his success with Pixar.
Jobs saw the potential in other products outside of his company that others didn't, as an example he pursued technology invented by Xerox to use in his Macintosh computer that changed personal computing from green screens to what we still use today, also known as graphical user interface or GUI. He was constantly on the prowl for new ideas by looking at what others may have forgotten or missed and products that were commercially viable to sell that weren't being sold. He was not afraid to make existing products better and take risks.
