Research Paper on Steve Jobs, His Life and Career

Background Info

Steve Jobs is an American entrepreneur, business magnate, inventer, and industrial designer. He was the chairman, chief executive officer, and a co-founder of Apple Inc. Jobs was also a CEO and majority shareholder of Pixar, a member of The Walt Disney Company’s board of directors. Steve Jobs had invested in Pixar and is the founder, chairman and CEO of NEXT. However, Steve Jobs is known to the world for the revolution of the microcomputer and starters in the smartphone technology. Steve Jobs was born in San Francisco, California on February 24, 1955. Steve’s biological parents gave him up, without a name, for adoption. As an infant, Jobs was adopted by Clara and Paul Jobs for which he was named Steven Paul Jobs. Clara worked as an accountant and Paul was a Coast Guard veteran and machinist. During his learn stage of life Jobs and his father worked on electronics in the family garage. Paul showed his son how to take apart and reconstruct electronics, which became Jobs’ interest and a hobby that built his experience, and mechanical prowess for electronics. As a young student, Jobs was intelligent and innovative thinker that the administration gave Jobs a proposal to skip to high school. After high school, Jobs was unsure about his future path. He dropped out of Reed college in Portland, Oregon after six months and then took creative classes at the school which he developed his love of typography. In 1974, Jobs took a position as a video game designer with Atari. During Job’s high school years, he was introduced to his future partner and co-founder of Apple Computer, Steve Wozniak. Both friends had a common interest in computers for which led them to starting Apple Inc.

Starting the Venture

In Steve Jobs’ high school years, he would ask William Hewlett, HP’s co-founder and president, for parts for a school project. However, Hewlett helped with the parts, but also offered him a summer internship at Hewlett-Packard. It was there that Jobs met Steve Wozniak, a young engineer five years his senior who became friends with Jobs. In 1976, both friends set up a workshop in in the Jobs’ family garage. Jobs sold his Volkswagen bus and his friend sold his HP calculator, so they can fund their venture of $1,350 in capital; the start of Apple. From there on, both friends began working on the prototype of the Apple I, which was later sold to hobbyists. This helped them generate enough money to improve their design, which led to them introducing the Apple II in 1977. It was the first personal computer with color graphics and a keyboard, which was designed for beginners. This invention was a huge success in Jobs’ career, as they began a new era in electronic technology. In the first-year the sales topped $3 million and then two years later the sales topped $200 million. However, as competition increased in the 1980’s Apple faced declining sales, majorly done by Apple III and LISA; caused the company to lose nearly half its market to IBM. Through major ups and downs, Apple now is the first ever $700 billion company and even Apple overtook Google as the most valuable brand in the world. Now Apple is in the race to become the first company with $1 trillion market capitalization.

Facing and Overcoming Challenges

Steve Jobs did not have a perfect life, as he was put for adoption as a young child and later finding out that both parents got married and had another child. Not only that, Apple was a struggle to run as when their sales were going down Steve Jobs’ had to create something new that people would buy, leading to the creation of Macintosh. However, this was also a failure due to the marketing flaws. He then created Mac, a home computer, which was too expensive for the consumer market. This led him to pitching Mac as a business computer, but with the lack of feature and capabilities, it was also a huge failure. Through all these hardships, Steve Jobs was fired as Apple’s board sided with the CEO John Sculley, whom he chose to run Apple personally. Losing all his power Jobs sold his shares of Apple stock and resigned in 1985. According to William Simon, co-author of ‘iCon: Steve Jobs, the Greatest Second Act in the History of Business.’ Steve was very demanding as he expected so much from the people who worked for him, and being gentle and polite was not part of his demeanor. However, not all failures and challenges are a bad thing as Steve Jobs said “it was the best thing that ever happened to me.” After a few months of unsure where to start in his career, he still had the passion of working with electronic and overcame all these challenges by starting over and not giving up; just like he did with the releasing a new computer bring sales up.

Using the money from the stock sale, Jobs launched NeXT Computer Co., with the goal of building a computer that would revolutionize research and higher education. The computer was introduced in 1988, the computer has a many of innovations, including fast processing speeds, exceptional graphics and an optical disk drive, but being too pricey it did not attract enough sales to keep the company afloat. Jobs overcame this situation by switching the company’s focus from hardware to software. He also began paying more attention to his other business, Pixar Animation Studios, which he had purchased from George Lucas in 1986. Jobs set out to create the first ever computer-animated feature film known as Toy Story. It became a huge hit when it was released in November 1995 that Jobs took Pixar public in 1996, and by the end of the first day of trading, his 80 percent share of the company was worth $1 billion. This also helped him overcome his other business’ issue as Apple bought NeXT for $400 million and re-appointed Jobs to Apple’s board of directors as an advisor to Apple chairman due to Apple struggling with development and hoped that Jobs could turn it around. Apple yet in great trouble Jobs was then signed to be CEO. He overcame this great issue with the help of Microsoft investing in them for the cost to cooperate on several sales and technology fronts. A major lesson from this was that even though Jobs had faced so many challenges which led him to being fired from the company he started, he then started from the bottom again and slowly brought himself to the top and this time getting to the top stronger.

Characteristics Leading to Success

Steve Jobs became a successful entrepreneur with his developed characteristics. Steven Paul Jobs was a hard worker and had the courage to become something special. When Apple was crashing in sales, he had the courage to lift up the sales by staying up all night and have meeting to create the next best thing. After one to many failures, he kept working harder and harder to where he eventually created the greatest company in the world in this era of technology. He was the jump starter of the new smart phones all due to his courage and his hard work that never put him down. This entrepreneur was successful because he had a passion for electronics. Even after he was kick out of the company he started, he did not give up his hobby of electronics. His passion from the young age (working on electronics with his dad and videography from school course), helped him start 2 new businesses that eventually was off the charts. Pixar created Toy Story, which was a the new era in animation movies and became the most popular movie, which eventually helped gain popularity in his NeXT business. His passion to become successful and to work with electronics, helped him succeed from the bottom all over again. He also became successful because he showed leadership to both companies. His enthusiasm and harshness got people to put in max effort, and with his leadership skills he created ideas and plans for the employees, so they all can reach to a money making product. An example, of his leadership was NeXt was losing sales, for which his harshness got the employee’s serious and with his knowledge of electronics, he made a plan to focus on the software and not the hardware. This helped the company bring up their sales for which Apple bought them out for their amazing products and sales. When Jobs was working with Woz to create the first microcomputer, Steve would give Woz courage to not give up on the product and because of this, it started up Apple.

Steve Jobs was a problem solver too in his lifetime, as when he was hired back on Apple, the sales were going down harshley to which he showed leadership and his skill of solving the issue by working with Bill Gates (Microsoft) to receive funding and also agreeing to partner up with sales. His characteristics saved Apple from blowing up and now his the most successful company in the world. Another characteristic that made Steve Jobs successful was his ability to try new things. When he was in high school and college he was trying other courses to find the perfect course for him. Even though those courses did not turn out to be his favourite he used the knowledge he gained from searching courses and used in the company he start. For example, Jobs took creative classes and worked with Atrai to gain experience that helped him expand his creativity and his ability to program to create new and better products like the iPod, and the iPhone. These are just 5 characteristic that made Steve Jobs a successful entrepreneur, even to this day.

Motivation of Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs became what he is today due to his passion of electronics, self motivation and inspiration from Edwin Land. Being passionate about electronic motivated him to choose a career related to electronics. When one is passionate about something, they are motivated to not give up. His passionation had helped him find another job that was related to his passionation, computers. Even though he had failed Apple, he did not give up his career with electronics. His passion kept him motivated to open another business NeXt which also dealt with electronics. Even then Jobs failed, but his passion told him to never give up and even he got the idea of focusing on the software and not the hardware. From then his business was a success and all due to his passion. According to Quora.com, “When Steve was 17, he would read a quote: If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” This had made an impression on him as from that day on, he would look in the mirror every morning and asked himself “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” If the answer was no for many days in a row, he told himself “I know I need to change something.” This had him motivated to keep doing what he feels right and keep an open mind about himself which helped him become better the next day on. Steve Jobs would never worry about the past and would concentrate on the present. Jobs believed that mistakes can be resolved and changes can be made. This self-motivation kept him positive and led him to correcting/improving his technology in the future.

Steve Jobs was also inspired by the Edwin Land, as he had learned a lot from his timeline. Steve Jobs wanted to live a similar lifestyle to him. Edwin Land was the creator of Polaroid land camera. Jobs also wanted to do the same as they is one reason he did not give up on making the first micro computer. He lived up to the quote that once Land did to; consumers don’t know what they want until they see it. When Land was fired from his own company, according to business insider.com Steve had “The man is a national treasure. I don’t understand why people like that can’t be held up as models: This is the most incredible thing to be — not an astronaut, not a football player — but this.” However, the company lost its edge and then ultimately failed when Land left, but Land had died before he could turn the company back to what is was. When Steve rejoined Apple again, he wanted to bring the company back on its feet to show the world that he was needed, this motivated him to create great technology and now bringing Apple to the top; all with the help of inspiration from Edwin Land.

Works Cited

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