Steve Jobs – iVisionary
Since his untimely death, so many tributes to the co-founder of Apple have poured in from across the world that the internet has buckled under the weight of the words 'Steve Jobs'. It is a measure of the depth and breadth of his impact.
One thing in particular accounts for that impact: Jobs' foresight and vision in anticipating, and seeking to fulfil, people's needs and desires. This was not the result of the superior market research and technology consultancy; he disdained such services because he sought to generate new markets and products: 'You've got to start with the customer experience and work back to the technology, not the other way around'.
This reverse progression is made difficult by the fact that most potential customers find it hard to articulate their needs and desires - either because they cannot imagine solutions or because they are looking for them in the wrong place. The generation that initially dismissed personal computers, mobile phones and emails as unnecessary is now the generation that cannot live without them. As Henry Ford is attributed with saying: 'If I'd asked customers what they wanted, they would've said "a faster horse"'. Steve Jobs, arguably Ford's successor as the world's greatest entrepreneur, put it more even more succinctly: 'A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them'. He used ice hockey to make his point: 'I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been'.
Jobs was no saint. His employees often found him arrogant, impolite and mercurial. Following complaints about his 'Management by Frightening' technique, he was ousted from the leadership of his company, only to return some years later. He has also been criticised for bequeathing products to the world that encourage individualism, hedonism and social disintegration.
But the art of anticipating people's wants and needs before they know they have them, or whilst they are looking in the wrong place to satisfy them, belongs to the role of the seer. It is reflected in the lives of the great prophets, pastors, leaders and teachers of history. They are revered as visionaries because they saw people's needs and desires with greater clarity than did the people themselves and re-directed their search for gratification. All who seek to follow them, especially in the arena of ultimate needs and desires, should take note.
Peter Heslam
Transforming Business, University of Cambridge
Links
Peter Heslam is an Associate of LICC and Director of Transforming Business, a project at the University of Cambridge that analyses and catalyses enterprise solutions to poverty. His booklet Transforming Capitalism: Entrepreneurship and the Renewal of Thrift, now a best-seller, has been re-printed in partnership with LICC.
The pervasiveness of the kind of technology associated with Steve Jobs can represent opportunity, convenience and security. But it can also provide the means to an unhealthy blurring of boundaries, such as between home and work, that can lead to stress and over-busyness. Two books that seek to address this hazard from a Christian perspective are published by IVP: The Busy Christians Guide to Busyness, by Tim Chester; and Working without Wilting: Starting Well to Finish Strong, by Jago Wynne.
An organization that seeks to address the relational impact of new media and technology is the Relationships Foundation. Some of its thinking is reflected and developed by LICC director Mark Greene in his book The Best Idea in the World: How Putting Relationships First Transforms Everything, published by Zondervan.
Jobs delivered a remarkable speech to students at Stanford University in 2005, about a year after he was diagnosed with cancer. Here are two short extracts:
"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked."
"No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet 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. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life."
Many people have commented that this is one of the most moving and profound speeches they've ever heard. The text and video recording of the full speech is available on the website of Stanford University here.
Tributes to Jobs include one from Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook: 'Thanks for showing that what you build can change the world' (posted on Facebook here).
In 1983, John Sculley was lured by Jobs away from Pepsi-Cola to become Apple's CEO with the words '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?' Sculley was instrumental in Job's dismissal from Apple but paid the following tribute to him on the announcement of his death (posted here):
"Steve Jobs was intensely passionate at making an importance difference in the lives of his fellow humans while he was on this planet. He never was into money or measured his life through owning stuff. (...) Steve Jobs captured our imagination with his creativity. His legacy is far more than being the greatest CEO ever. A world leader is dead, but the lessons his leadership taught us lives on."
An authorised biography of Jobs is written by Walter Isaacson, the former managing editor of Time magazine, entitled Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography. Customer pre-purchases made this the number one bestseller on Amazon within hours of the announcement of Jobs' death, stimulating the publishing house Simon & Schuster to bring forward its publication by one month.
A very insightful article. Thank you.
Date:
2011-10-14 17:04:28
Author:
tonycoffey