It’s safe to say that the late Steve Jobs revolutionized computing along with the business of making, selling and shipping computers.
Jobs was the mastermind behind revolutionary technology products just as the technology age we are currently living in got its start.
It is almost like the old chicken and egg question because it’s difficult to imagine where IT outsourcing and supply chains would be today and how productive we would all be at our jobs without Jobs’ ideas, innovations and massive influence.
One of Apple’s earliest catch-phrases was that it made a computer “for the rest of us.” For those of us who can remember the first MacIntosh – it was a small, almost nondescript machine that suddenly opened a universe of possibility on a small desktop because it was easy to understand and use by the “rest of us.” You did not have to be a computer whiz or master arcane programming languages and operating systems like Cobol or DOS to work effectively on a computer. He made computers personal.
While Jobs was not famed for his collaborative traits, which are a hallmark of Vested Outsourcing, he did bring some Vested ideals to the table including: innovation, flexibility, teamwork, communication and running the business with vision, foresight and insight.
The thing I like about Jobs is that he had vision and wanted to make that vision real while sharing it with the rest of the world.
When the first Mac was released in 1984, Jobs said, “We’re gambling on our vision, and we would rather do that than make ‘me too’ products. Let some other companies do that. For us it’s always the next dream.”
Here are few other pertinent and resonant words to consider from the wisdom of Steve Jobs:
– When he was recruiting John Sculley, then president of PepsiCo, to Apple, Jobs asked: “Do you want to spend the rest of life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?”
– “You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give it to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.”
– “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.”
– “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.”
– “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.”
– “Most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.”
– “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 the future.”
Many of those quotes came from Jobs’ 2005 Stanford University commencement speech, which is well worth a listen.
Connecting the dots, courage, innovation, trust and breaking away from dogma – fine qualities to implement in life and in business.