Jessica Weimerskirk CEO Paper MGNT 3165 Steve Jobs: How One Man Changes An Entire Industry A CEO, Chief Executive Officer, in a company is known as the top dog. A CEO is the highest ranked employee of a company or organization. A CEO is in charge of multiple tasks that concern management. Because a CEO holds the highest rank in a company he/she is the top manager and holds all the power of managing an organization. However, a CEO must also answer to the organizations Board of Directors. A CEO is actually a very important person in a company. This person is responsible for organizing the company internally and externally using strategic plans and strategies. Because these CEOs operate under their individually created strategies, they often seem to give birth to innovative ideas that make the company more efficient and create change amongst the industry. There have been many CEOs that have initiated change in a certain industry because of the way they manage their employees. One of these famous CEOs was Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Inc. He is one of the famous CEOs in the computer technology industry that brought about change in that industry. Apple Inc, formally known as Apple Computer Inc, was established and incorporated in the year 1977 in Cupertino, California (Apple Inc.). Steve Jobs was actually the cofounder of Apple Computer Inc. in 1776. Apple Inc. has been expanding rapidly since its creation. Apple has gone from solely focusing on computer technology to focusing on technology as a whole. Apple Inc. is one of the largest companies in the
world and the most valuable technology company in the world, having surpassed Microsoft (Apple Inc.). As of now Apple Inc. manages 301 retail stores that are located in ten different countries. Apple also manages a large online store where consumers can shop faster and find exactly what they are looking for in the comfort of their own home. Apple has pretty much swept most of its competitors away in the technology industry. However, in the beginning, Apple s biggest competitor was International Business Machines (IBM). By 1983 it was estimated that Apple had lost half of its market share to IBM (Steve Jobs Biography). Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, still led Apple down the road of success in which it still follows today. Steven Paul Jobs, known as Steve Jobs, is a very notorious person in the computer and technology industry. Steve was born in San Francisco, California on February 24, 1955. Jobs did not grow up with his biological parents. He was adopted at a young age by a couple by the names of Paul and Clara. Jobs attended Cupertino Junior High School and Homestead High School in Cupertino, California, and frequented after-school lectures at the Hewlett-Packard Company in Palo Alto, California (Steve Jobs). One of his first jobs was actually at The Hewlett-Packard Company. He was hired by Steve Wozniak to work with him through the summer. After graduating from high school, Steve attended Reed College in Portland, Oregon. Steve had a rough time while matriculating through college. Steve spent most of his college years sleeping on the floor in friends rooms, returning Coke bottles for food money, and getting weekly free meals at the local Hare Krishna temple (Steve Jobs). Jobs and Wozniak were becoming very found of each other. They stayed in touch and communicated when Steve was away in college. In the autumn of 1974, Jobs
returned to California and began attending meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club with Wozniak. He took a job as a technician at Atari, a manufacturer of popular video games, with the primary intent of saving money for a spiritual retreat to India (Steve Jobs). This is where his career took off. Steve learned about teamwork and how to empower others at this job. These are two very important skills needed to become successful in many different ways. Steve was assigned a duty to create a circuit board for a video game named Breakout. The object of this task was to eliminate the amount of chips that were needed in the circuit board. For each chip that was eliminated from the board Jobs would receive a cash reward. However, Jobs did not have a lot of knowledge in the area of specialization that was needed to fulfill the task that was given to him. Jobs decided to make a phone call to Mr. Wozniak since he had more experience and knowledge about the circuit boards. They completed the task together successfully. These are just some of the skills Jobs learned that helped him get to where he is now. After the founding of Apple Inc, the company tried to gather corporate employees that would be committed and dedicated to their jobs and help Apple Inc grow as a company and remain productive. Apple needed a top-of-the-line staff to run this company. In 1983, Steve Jobs lured John Sculley away from Pepsi-Cola to serve as Apple s CEO, asking, Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to come with me and change the world? (Steve Jobs). About a year after recruiting Sculley, Jobs decided that he was going to make a change. He introduced an item that would change the computer technology industry and put Apple above all other competitors. This item was the Macintosh computer.
In 1984 the company was reporting losses and other financial problems. They were not making the number that they needed to obtain. This sales slump was crucial to Apple. The slump called for employees to be laid off. Steve Jobs happened to be one of the employees that Sculley decided had to leave. Steve Jobs founded another computer company around the year 1984 named NeXT Computer. He accomplished many things at this company. He didn t give up after being laid off. He decided to stay on top of the game by creating better, more efficient computers. At NeXT Computer Company, Steve introduced a new form of computer named the NeXTcube. The NeXTcube was described by Jobs as an interpersonal computer, which he believed was the next step after personal computing. That is, if computers could allow people to communicate and collaborate together in an easy way, it would solve many of the problems that personal computing had come up against (Steve Jobs). After the invention of the NeXTcube, NeXTMail was created. This was basically an email application that made communication between people easier. NeXTMail allowed clickable embedded graphics and audio within email (Steve Jobs). Steve was also involved in the creation of other companies. He bought out an older company named The Graphics Group for about $10 million from Lucasfilm s computer graphics division. Steve once again finds success in a new business. He bought out the old company hoping to create a company that developed high-end graphics on computers. He renamed the company Pixar. However this journey in the new company was not a smooth ride. In the beginning, the company was selling Pixar Image Computers and was not generating much profit. After much thought, Steve decided to sign a contract with Disney and create computer animated feature films. These films were a hit. They
became so popular. The very first film produced by them was Toy Story and many more successful films followed. Jobs became very wealthy because of the Pixar Corporation. He was so successful because Steve always tried to find innovation and change in everything he did. This is just one of the many leadership skills Steve possessed that helped him move forward and create such amazing and profitable companies. Steve was always one step ahead of the game. After many years of not being profitable, Apple decided to take a different route. They were rethinking their earlier actions involving the termination of Steve Jobs. Apple decided to buy the NeXT computer in hopes of fixing their crisis and eventually regaining Steve as a part of Apple. This deal was finalized in 1996 for $429. Steve was also recruited because of this deal which put Apple in a very good position. Steve was back at the company he co-founded and was ready to make some changes. Shortly after the arrival of Steve, current projects were terminated. Steve was also forced to layoff a couple of people who he felt were not necessary for the company s growth. Newton, Cyberdog, and OpenDoc were some of the projects that were terminated. Many features of the NeXT computer found its way into the Apple computers design. The two computers became basically the same. One of the most popular features transferred was the NeXTSTEP. NeXTSTEP is now known as Mac OSX. Steve was like an overflowing pot of ideas. He was a very innovative person and could not keep his innovative ideas to himself. Steve said, Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower, (CrunchBase).Steve designs a couple new products that in turn take Apple back to the top of the industry. After the presentation of these products, Apple s profitability soars through the roof. One of these famous designs was
the introduction of the imac. Appealing designs and powerful branding have worked well for Apple (Steve Jobs). Because of Steve s hard work, he was able to move back to CEO of the company. He later came up with a unique title for his position. He wanted people to refer to him as iceo of Apple. Apple decided that they were going to make listening to music on-the-go much easier for their customers. Apple s next invention that excited the community was a portable mp3 device called the ipod. With the introduction of the ipod portable music player, itunes digital music software, and the itunes Store, the company made forays into consumer electronic and music distribution (Steve Jobs). In 2007, Apple entered the cellular phone business with the introduction of the iphone, a multi-touch display cell phone, which also included the features of an ipod and, with its own browser, revolutionized the mobile browsing scene (Steve Jobs). Steve Jobs is an amazing CEO because he has brilliant ideas and seeks to reach out and expand in different ways. He decided to branch out and use his inventions in the cell phone industry. The fact that Steve is not afraid to branch-out is one of the keys to his success. This puts him, yet again, ahead of the others and at the top. Steve has, however, encountered problems during his career at Apple. He has also created a couple of new inventions that fail and have not been introduced to the consumers. Steve is still a person which means he is not perfect. What makes him a true leader and role model is how he decided to act upon the mistakes and imperfections in Apple. One of the problems faced by Steve was the protest against e-waste in the United States. E-waste was a recycling program created by Apple to recycle its products. However, this program seemed to anger the consumers and the public all around the
United States. The people stated that the e-waste system was a poor recycling system that could be better. Apple was facing a lot of criticism by the public and Steve decided to take action. He knew he needed to come up with a different program that could satisfy the public. Within a month, Steve came up with a new project that involved collecting ipods for free at local retail stores. This program was not good enough to please those critics so Steve got back to work. He thought for several weeks about an effective way to please the critics. He later came to the conclusion to expand the previous program and allow all Apple users in the United States who purchase a new Mac to safely dispose of their old computer systems. The new program included shipping and environmentally friendly disposal (Steve Jobs). The situation led to the addition of a new core value about environmentally safe disposal of products. Core values are important to Apple and Steve makes these core values known in the company both internally and externally. Steve has proven to be highly successful because of his leadership style. He is the type of manager that wants tasks to be completed on-time and perfect. He is also a very organized person. Steve s personality has been described as aggressive and demanding (Steve Jobs). He always strives for improvement and in today s society it is important to constantly change in order to become more efficient. Steve once stated to the public, there s an old Wayne Gretzky quote that I love, I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has already been. And we ve always tried to do that at Apple since the very beginning and we always will (Steve Jobs). Steve Jobs has changed the computer information and technology industry over the past few years and it appears that nothing is going to stand in his way when it comes to his work. This is why Steve Jobs is such a notorious CEO.
Works Cited "Apple Inc.." Wikipedia. Web. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/apple_inc>. "Steve Jobs." Wikipedia. Web. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/steve_jobs>. "Steve Jobs Biography." Encyclopedia of World Biography. Web. <http://wwww.notablebiographies.com/ho-jo/jobs-steve.html>. "Steve Jobs." CrunchBase. N.p., 01/15/2009. Web. 7 Apr 2011. <http://www.crunchbase.com/person/steve-jobs>.