Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs: Innovator
The 7 insanely different principles of Jobs’ breakthrough success with Apple
Carmine Gallo
Columnist, BusinessWeek.com
INTRODUCTION
Apple co-founder Steve Jobs will be remembered as one of a handful of history’s most elite innovators. He was the classic American entrepreneur — starting his company in the spare bedroom of his parents’ house and pioneering the development of the first personal computer for everyday use. This was a man who was fired from the company he had started, but returned 12 years later to save it from near bankruptcy. Not only that, but in the next 10 years Jobs used Apple to reinvent four different industries — computing, music, telecommunications and entertainment. (Let’s not forget he was the CEO of a little company called Pixar.) In 2010, Fortune magazine named Jobs the CEO of the Decade. The famed New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote a column in which he declared America needs more jobs — Steve Jobs. He meant that innovation and creativity must be nurtured and encouraged to help the United States and other countries emerge from the global recession. Everyone wants to learn more about what made Steve Jobs tick, yet very few journalists have identified the core principles that drove Jobs and his success. My book The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs (McGraw-Hill, 2010) reveals the 7 principles that were largely responsible for his breakthrough success — principles that guided Jobs throughout his career.
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Principle One: Do what you love.
In 2005, Steve Jobs told Stanford University’s graduating class that the secret to success is having “the courage to follow your heart and intuition.” Inside, he suggested, “you already know what you truly want to become.” Jobs followed his heart his entire career, and that passion, according to him, made all the difference. It’s very difficult to come up with new, creative ideas that move society forward if you are not passionate about the subject. “I think
The 7 insanely different principles of Jobs’ breakthrough success with Apple
Carmine Gallo
Columnist, BusinessWeek.com
INTRODUCTION
Apple co-founder Steve Jobs will be remembered as one of a handful of history’s most elite innovators. He was the classic American entrepreneur — starting his company in the spare bedroom of his parents’ house and pioneering the development of the first personal computer for everyday use. This was a man who was fired from the company he had started, but returned 12 years later to save it from near bankruptcy. Not only that, but in the next 10 years Jobs used Apple to reinvent four different industries — computing, music, telecommunications and entertainment. (Let’s not forget he was the CEO of a little company called Pixar.) In 2010, Fortune magazine named Jobs the CEO of the Decade. The famed New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote a column in which he declared America needs more jobs — Steve Jobs. He meant that innovation and creativity must be nurtured and encouraged to help the United States and other countries emerge from the global recession. Everyone wants to learn more about what made Steve Jobs tick, yet very few journalists have identified the core principles that drove Jobs and his success. My book The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs (McGraw-Hill, 2010) reveals the 7 principles that were largely responsible for his breakthrough success — principles that guided Jobs throughout his career.
1
Principle One: Do what you love.
In 2005, Steve Jobs told Stanford University’s graduating class that the secret to success is having “the courage to follow your heart and intuition.” Inside, he suggested, “you already know what you truly want to become.” Jobs followed his heart his entire career, and that passion, according to him, made all the difference. It’s very difficult to come up with new, creative ideas that move society forward if you are not passionate about the subject. “I think