The death of Steve Jobs, announced tonight by Apple, was expected but still comes as a shock. There are very few business people who are truly irreplaceable but Mr Jobs was undoubtedly so.
Like many other people, I heard the news via his products – in my case through Twitter on an iPod Touch — and am writing this on a MacBook Air. Mr Jobs’ original vision of a world of personal computers came truer than even he imagined.
When he stepped down as chief executive of Apple in August, I wrote this about him and his extraordinary career as an innovator and entrepreneur:
Mr Jobs, at the age of only 56, stands as one of the great business leaders – arguably the greatest – of the postwar era. For the past 30 years, he has not only led the wave of technological change emanating from Silicon Valley – the personal computer, the internet, the tablet – but stamped his aesthetic on the world.
That, of course, remains true but one thing I think is under-appreciated about Mr Jobs is the degree to which he mastered running a small, insurgent business and what became the most valuable US company — it still just pipped Exxon Mobil on his death.
Mr Jobs was quoted by John Sculley, chief executive of Apple in the interregnum between his departure in 1985 and return in 1997, as saying: “It’s more fun to be a pirate than to join the navy.” He had a sense of fighting against giant competitors such as IBM and Microsoft as a small insurgent.
Yet Mr Jobs came to run the navy himself — his old rivals had fallen by the wayside, beaten by his singular vision and Apple’s brilliant execution.
The skills required to run a small company and a large one — let along a giant one — are quite different and founders often hand over control to practised executives as that transition occurs. It was one reason for the appointment of Mr Sculley.
Mr Jobs, however, managed to keep the creative spark and innovative spirit within Apple as it grew despite the far greater logistical and marketing challenges that presented. He had help from those around him, such as Tim Cook, who has succeeded him as CEO, but it remains an amazing achievement.
Much of it came down to Mr Jobs’ magnetism and his intolerance of anything less than perfection, which still imbues Apple today.
He will be much missed, not only at Apple but in the business world as a whole.
