Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs will go down as arguably the greatest inventor of my lifetime. He was an innovator, an entrepreneur, and an educator. Unfortunately, I never knew much about Steve Jobs until his death. I really only knew him for his work with Apple. After watching the two videos from class I learned so much about him as a businessman and also as a person. The video that especially stuck out to me the most was the 2005 commencement speech at Stanford University. In this speech he told 3 stories that related to his career and also his personal life. The first story was about Steve's education. After high school he decided to go to a college that was very expensive and after 6 months he dropped out because he felt like he was wasting his parents money because he didn’t know what he wanted to do in life. After he dropped out he was able to sign up for classes that he was specifically interested in instead of taking mandatory classes he wasn’t interested in. Something that stuck out to me in this story was that he took a calligraphy class and says if he never took that class he would have never been able to make Apples typing fonts so amazing. The second story was about when he was fired from Apple and became a public failure. After he was fired from Apple he never gave up and started two companies: Pixar and Next. Pixar was a huge success and Next was bought by Apple, which led Steve Jobs back to working for Apple. In his third story about death, he explains how he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and was given 4 months to live. Fortunately, after a successful surgery he was cured. After explaining how scary this was he tells the students to live their lives to the fullest and enjoy everyday like it’s their last, because in reality it could be. I think these 3 stories answer every question asked in the assignment. His most important management lessons are told in the stories: to never give up, to find something you love and pursue it, and also in his final line of the speech “to always stay hungry and foolish” which to me means to always keep striving to be the best but also to never lose who you are. Retail has benefited incredibly from Steve Jobs because Apple has produced some of the most successful technological products in the last few decades, including: the Mac book, iPod, iPhone, and iPad. When Apple comes out with a new product everyone “needs” to have it, it’s become a huge part of American culture now. I think Steve Jobs had an incredible career and I think his successes have showed how he is as a person. He was a dreamer and a philosopher. I learned so much from his speech at Stanford and his career. Some of the main points are: to follow your dreams, never give up, and to always stay true to yourself. This relates to class because it talks about entrepreneurs and inventing which is a big part of chapter 1.