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How Steve Jobs changed the World

by Richard GourlayBusiness culture, Business Values, Dumfries and Galloway, Innovation, opportunity, StrategyPosted on Comments are Disabled

Strategy: How Steve Jobs changes teh world by Richard Gourlay

Apple’s founder and talisman, Steve Jobs has finally had to step down from running the world’s most successful company.  It is probably overdue that the world recognises this brilliant strategist who changed the world.  Here’s how Steve Jobs changed the world.

Had Steve Jobs just set-up Apple he would have gone down in history as a great inventor.  But to have done it twice over with the same company, while in the process creating the world’s biggest company, surely makes him the greatest ever.  Possibly his most important contribution was that he created markets and then the best products possible for those new markets.  Steve Jobs understood that the technology needed to work for customers, rather than expect people to work the technology.   

A Brilliant Visionary

As a brilliant businessman and strategist, he more importantly created world class products and ran the company that delivered those products to market. Most superb inventors just invent, and most great directors’ focus on leading. To do both simultaneously to such a high standard is an outstanding achievement.

Steve Jobs is so unusual because he understands that great technology does not sell itself. That to have great technology you have to be passionate not only about what you produce, but also about the world in which your products exist.

Steve Jobs a brief history

  • 1976 started Apple with Stephen Wozniak to make and sell printed circuit boards
  • 1978 launched  a new disc drive which made the money to invest in whole computers
  • Launched the revolutionary Macintosh computer in 1984
  • Ousted from Apple in 1985 and returned after creating NeXT in 1996 which Apple bought
  • Created Pixar with $5 billion in box-office sales, sold for $7.4 to Disney in 1996
  • Created the i-generation with more to come such as iCloud and entering the TV market

While to many who did not understand his holistic strategy, they looked for and saw flaws. They tried to stab the ego and even removed him from his own company (to play safe with what he had produced as a single new product).  He played the long game recognising that the world would not be changed overnight. This was his strategic master-stoke.  He got the timing right by understanding the big picture and knowing when to strike.

A Difficult Man To Work With

He has been described by those who have worked with him as wilful, irascible, temperamental and stubborn, to name a few.  But can anyone do so much without at least those characteristics to change the world?  Other words, which people often use to describe him, include perfectionist, insistent and mesmerising. These words are the ones which the world will remember for. These drove him and describe how he has achieved such global success.

As a manager he had difficult dealings with many people at all levels, from investors and employees.  Management and human relationships was not Steve Jobs’ forte. These difficulties made him human. They were simple human failings which showed he was not perfect, but not issues which limited his vision or aspirations.

Steve Jobs Stanford Address

In his Stanford addresss (click here to see it here) in 2005 he explained what made him, drove him and continued to motivate him to become the person he was. This address is one of the few times he spoke of the huge success for which the world will remember him for.

Steve Jobs changed the world.

He saw a world revolution in technology before anyone else, and saw how he could drive that change. Great strategic thinking not only thinking about change, but also the impact of that change will have. That’s what makes him simply the best. Other owners and directors were working on improving their share price, or becoming number one with their new product. Focusing on the today, this month’s or this years priorities, not on changing the world. Steve Jobs looked beyond the single product to look at the whole picture of what a new world might look like.

Steve Jobs drove Apple to rethink the world and in doing so became its biggest player. His line in recruiting John Sculley from Pepsi “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”. This sums up his strategic brilliance.

Steve Jobs Visionary

Evidence of this brilliant approach comes throughout his career. From using Vangelis’ Chariots of Fire music to launch the Macintosh, through to his unforgettable iPod launch where with a huge back screen shot he casually produced it from the back pocket of his jeans! Steve Jobs has learnt how to successfully engage with audiences. Every product is meticulously planned with product lined up to two years in advance, with innovative marketing from start to finish.

Moving From Technology to Retail

From a business which started out a just selling technology, it is now seen as having the best retail environment. That retail environment created places people actually want to visit.  Apple shops where the focus is on excellence, not on pedalling technology cheaper than the next retailer.

Steve Jobs has always had an eye for detail. His artistic flare turned geeky boxes into works of art. Steve want on a calligraphy course which led him to have a non standard font, Apple Garamond created rather than traditional New Roman Times font. Something he goaded Microsoft about at a high school speech some years later. That attention to detail is what demonstrated his perfectionist approach and left the competitors looking and feeling like they were in the dark ages.

Think Different Campaign

Apple’s “Think different” strategy has worked so well since 1997 because it touched people who felt there was no alternative to Bill Gates’ Microsoft monopoly of software. Think Different also drove change for both the 50,000 Apple employees and allowing his strategy to infect and spread globally.  It was not only technical people who bought into Macs but a whole new generation of users, who found that there was a credible alternative that did more than just be a glorified typewriter.

While Apple was never one man.  Steve Jobs legacy will be difficult to estimate for many years to come as the world’s most successful businessman. The old adage, it is not what one has done that counts but what one leaves to grow, that is the measure of a man’s success. It will take time for the world to see his true legacy, but the following puts some numbers behind this success.

Since Steve Jobs comeback in 1997 Apple has sold:-

  • 26 million iPhones
  • 60 million computers 
  • 200 million iPods
  • 1 billion iTunes songs   

Apple is currently valued at $356 billion ($2 Billion ahead of Exxon). Making it the largest company in the world. Last quarter alone Apple profits more than doubled to $7.3 billion. Sales rose by 82% to $28.6 billion by selling 20 million iPhones, 9 million iPads, 8 million iPods and 4 million Mac computers.

Steve Jobs announcement of his retirement wiped $17 billion *(5%) from its market share. But over his leadership he has increased its share value by 9000% since 1997.

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Have you felt the full power of the Internet Tsunami Yet?

by Richard GourlayBusiness Identity, competitive advantage, content strategy marketing, Innovation, Marketing, opportunity, VisionPosted on Comments are Disabled
Has the world moved for you, or did you miss it? The world of business has shifted but many businesses don’t seem to have noticed the great shift in power away from companies to the customer. The internet is not a fixed service, it is growing and evolving rapidly and with it so are the tools and uses it delivers. What was once a way to replace your Yellow Pages has become the most powerful source of information the world has ever seen.  Have you felt the full power of the internet tsunami yet?
We all see the impact of the Internet in every market sector.  We see the growth of online shopping or the growth of smart phones and the online move of insurance and music online.  That shift and the corresponding growths of new consumers are just beginning to be understood, this is just the proverbial tip of the iceberg. The next stage of the internet revolution has yet to be felt.

The Great Paradigm Shift: Internet Tsunami

As our understanding of this shifting paradigm slowly emerges and evolves.  It takes time for its impact to be fully understood and its impacts to be really appreciated. In the same way as the impact of the introduction of domestic electricity which subsequently facilitated the introduction of the radio, which spread communication did in previous generations. So the rise in power of the Internet is more than just our ability to look stuff up and buy consumer goods online.
This paradigm shift has certain key features, which makes the rise of the Internet generation far more dramatic in its impact to business today.
Unlike many previous innovations, the move online has been done in an infinitely scalable way.  Making markets financially accessible to company’s of any size and dimension using low cost everyday technology. The whole plethora of internet software platforms provide total engagement opportunities for businesses to reach specialist or global markets. Rather than being a premium service only open to the super rich, such as the introduction of the car, airline or a global consumer product range. A good idea, service or product can now be provided through the internet instantly. The availability of multiple open software technology platforms, has lowered cost and created universal access by braking down barriers across all areas of a global market.

The Internet is a Global Movement

This global shift, supported by governments and industry to reach and penetrate all and every strata of society and on an almost global reach is a new global phenomenon creating a universal shift.
Whether in New Guinea or Newfoundland, you can get a 3G signal.  Many countries like India and China just leapfrogged the copper wire landline systems of the 20th century through large parts of their country’s moving straight into the 21st century, avoiding unnecessary cost and rapidly accelerating progress throughout their country.  The Arab spring was not achieved by any three letter acronym news agency or Rupert Murdock’s media empire, but by new young mobile online generation who created, sustained and drove the rolling revolutions.

The POWER of the Internet Tsunami

The result of the internet revolution is that the world has made a huge step forward almost overnight.  That has changed more than just the way we buy some products, it has in fact changed the way we think, and act.  This universal overnight movement has also solved the adoption dilemma for new technology.  For companies to achieve a launch of a new product or service they had to achieve a critical volume and this can now be achieved without geographic boundaries.  The internet creates multiple new routes to market, bypassing traditional routes to market, achieving profit without having to invest huge amounts of capital in awareness marketing.
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Internet Empowered Intelligence

This paradigm shift has moved the way we think to such an extent that everything has changed. When in 1906 Admiral Sir John Fisher invented the Dreadnought battleship in 1906, he changed naval world overnight. At the time the Royal navy had 1,000 ships of the line, the introduction of the Dreadnought made them all redundant overnight. Suddenly, to be a superpower it was not the number of ships you had but how many Dreadnoughts you had and a new arms race had begun as every other battleship become redundant.
In the same way, the introduction of always available high speed broadband has made so much of business thinking redundant, not just in the collapse of use of directories such as yellow pages, dictionaries or our communication. Today people have empowered intelligence, the ability to become informed by scanning a QR code, or connecting to a highly rated source they can become more than informed, they can become actively empowered.

Internet Tsunami Continually Evolves 

The internet is now driving people to think and do things in different ways across many age and economic cohorts. Its not just the young buying music or consumers doing their shopping online, although both have delivered huge shifts in culture to these markets.  People’s first mental response to knowledge and decision making is now to click, look-up and become informed.
No-longer relying on our embedded historical mental heritage or through experts’ advice, people are now researching and networking their knowledge and our learning, widening knowledge and creating expert communities on almost every subject matter possible. For example to become an expert on social media you could do an online course or you could click onto Mashable and become an expert within hours. Anyone and everyone can become an expert, exposing consumer and business choice to new forces and opportunities.
You may have heard the old adage that there is more computer power in a simple watch today than on the Apollo 11 spacecraft which took man to the moon. People have at their finger tips more knowledge about companies than even the most informed company is aware off. Users groups, expert forums and review sites empower and drive decisions, in a far more effective way than traditional marketing channels can persuade customers.
In just in the same way that the Arctic Monkeys pioneered the music online community following, rather than through the plugging and playlist approval to get on the radio. Today the same today is true of consumer both in consumer and business markets.
The power of the internet is yet to be fully understood. For some it has been like a Tsunami, just as a record shop or an insurance salesman. To many others though it is an unseen force, they know its there but not what or how it operates and effects their business. But it is and it will. The sooner business wakes up to these changes the better placed they will be to compete without feeling they have one hand behind their back.