Steve Jobs is a great innovator, a brilliant engineer and a talented leader.
A man who changed almost all spheres of human activity thanks to his unique inventions.
Apple shook the world with things like the iPad, iPhone and iPod, iMac computers, Pixar animation studio – and that’s not all of the genius’ achievements.
What are the secrets of Steve Jobs’ success? What allowed him to change the world and achieve tremendous success?
How innovative ideas were born
Steve Jobs’ unique ideas of global scale were not something supernatural, Steve simply loved IT technologies and dreamed of changing the world. Each of his ideas was an accident based on constant search and life experience. Jobs’ life, like every genius, was not easy, and apart from phenomenal ups there were many crushing downs. Let’s consider them all in order.
Steve was born in San Francisco. He was raised in a family of adoptive parents – Paul and Clara Jobs. The main condition for adoption by Jobs’ biological mother was the promise of the adoptive parents to send the boy to college for higher education. They kept their promise, the parents paid for Jobs’ expensive education in the prestigious Reed College, but Steve studied there for only six months. He explained that he simply did not know what he wanted to devote his life to and realized that college would not help him find his calling.
Fonts for iMac
However, Jobs stayed on the college campus, slept on the floor in the rooms of his student friends to eat, Steve turned in Coca-Cola bottles, and attended only those seminars he was interested in, among which was a course on calligraphy. At that time it seemed completely useless, Steve just liked beautiful typography, but 10 years later this experience became the basis for creating typography and proportional fonts for the first iMac computer, which were later adopted by Windows.
Apple Foundation
The great company Apple was born in the garage of Steve Jobs’ parents, where Steve and his close friend Steve Wozniak assembled the first innovative computer, which gave rise to the idea of creating their own company and finding investors.
The name Apple seemed to be the most optimal, it sounded “very energetic”, and allowed to place the company on the first pages of the telephone directory.The main and first investor of Apple was Mike Marculla, and in 1980 Apple was given the status of a national company, and its total capital amounted to millions of dollars.
FirstMacintosh
While working on Apple’s new project, the development of the new Lisa computer, Steve Jobs was removed from the project because his bad temper and rebelliousness made it difficult for the rest of the project to work with him. Jobs took this as a challenge and began working on his own project to create the Macintosh computer – simple for the user and incredibly efficient. The Apple team unanimously disapproved of Steve’s project, but when launched on the market, Lisa’s project failed miserably and the first iMac became a top seller.
Pixar Studios and NeXT.
Despite the success of the iMac, Jobs’ nasty temper got him fired from Apple. This was his personal tragedy, but he knew that the love for his life’s work was too great, which is why he founded an innovative new company, NeXT, and also acquired the animation studio Pixar.
The Renaissance of Apple
During the years that Apple spent without Steve Jobs, the company was on the verge of extinction – sales had fallen, many worthy competitors had appeared on the market, and things were not going well at all. During this period, Apple bought out a young and promising company called NeXT and asked Steve to return to the helm.
iPod, iTunes, iPhone, iPad, App Store…
After Jobs returned to Apple, it was the “heyday of the company”, Steve was not only an innovator but also a talented marketer. The first thing he did was to launch the “Think Different” commercial, known throughout the advertising industry, in which he said that Apple creates products for brave people and dreamers, and Apple’s inventions will completely change the way users think about design – this is how the new and incredible, translucent iMac was presented. This is how Steve realized his idea that the PC is to become the center of every person’s modern life. He turned Apple products into a style, a culture and a way of life.
At Jobs’ prompting, Apple developed a new device that has become a digital music legend – the iPod – a beautiful, functional and incredibly convenient device, a music player that allows the user to dive into the world of iTunes quality digital music.
The advent of the iPhone changed the world’s technology in general and smartphone technology in particular. Just as the first tablet computer, the iPad, changed the world of the computer industry.
Another genius invention of Jobs was the App Store, an online app store that gives access to 10 billion apps for iOS devices. More than 1 billion apps are downloaded from the App Store every day. So, step by step, Steve Jobs turned the products and technologies of the IT industry into real works of art.
How to Change the World: 7 Principles of Steve Jobs’ Success
Steve Jobs spent his entire life searching for new ideas that would change the world and ways to realize them. Knowledge and rich life experience, ups and downs, allowed Steve to derive 7 main principles that have guided him throughout his great career as an inventor and innovator.
The 7 secrets of Steve Jobs’ success:
- “Do what you love.” Steve Jobs was madly in love with the business he devoted his life to. Without loving what you do, you won’t be able to achieve half the success you could. Look for what you are truly interested in so that you can enjoy your work.
- “Leave a mark on the universe.” Steve has always strived to change the world, to make it better and more convenient. Innovation does not have to be global in nature, it can be a project to increase productivity at an enterprise or a new device for cleaning vegetables for housewives, the main thing is that your idea should be useful and make life easier for ordinary consumers.
“Shake up your consciousness.” Try to avoid stereotypical thinking. Add creativity to every work process, accumulate new experiences, impressions and acquaintances, this will help to expand the boundaries of your standard thinking. - “Sell dreams, not products.” Steve, as a competent marketer, never sold people just his products. He always presented them with something more. iPod is not just a new music player, iPod is “a thousand songs in your pocket”. This was Steve’s way of showing that the customer was buying not just a new device, but a dream, that now he could put all his musical passions in his pocket and take the compact device with him wherever he went.
- “Say no to a thousand things. When designing an iPhone or iPod, Jobs was always trying to eliminate unnecessary things in order to make the device comfortable, compact and light, and he applied the same principles to the design of new devices. He believed that simplicity was the hardest and most important thing.
- “Create an insanely great experience.” Steve believed that it was the relationship with his customers that largely guaranteed his success. That’s why he tried to create a deep emotional connection between customers and Apple products. With this in mind, he built a gold-standard system of customer service and customer experience at the Apple Store retail chain.
- “Master the message.” Steve considered the presentation of a new product to the audience to be an important element of its launch. The presentation should not be a dry recitation of the product’s unique features, it should be “a mesmerizing show that should excite people”.
“Steve Jobs’ unique rules for creating an effective presentation” you can find in our blog.
Steve Jobs will forever remain a great innovator and a legend in the history of the IT industry. Be inspired by his story, apply his rules of success and who knows what great ideas and innovations await you!
