Our first computer at CommCore was an Apple ii – about as primitive as the Wright Brothers’ first plane was to today’s A-380 or a Boeing Dreamliner. The Apple product gave us an edge.
It is hard to understate the role that Steve Jobs had in transforming our world. Superlatives are indeed deserved. To say he had vision is like asking if Michael Jordan has a competitive streak.
He broke convention and truly succeeded. Mere mortals are told to get in touch with the consumer. Jobs succeeded with the gut instinct that the consumer doesn’t know what he/she wants until we show it to them. Macintosh, iPhone, iTunes, iPad et al – at least he was right.
Jobs even had a self effacing perspective on mortality. Here’s what he said at the commencement speech at Stanford in 2005, when he thought he had licked pancreatic cancer. “Death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.”
At CommCore, we counsel clients on how leadership and CEO’s make a difference. We also look at how Boards and organizations must compensate for a leader’s human failings. Job’s failing was his health and we all hope that talented people at Apple who came up with the ideas that Jobs molded and shaped, all have a bit of their founder and visionary leader in them.
The world is smaller, more connected because of Steve Jobs. Today it’s just a little lonelier without him.