Steve Jobs - Marketing Visionary

The article that Rohit Bhargava wrote about Apple’s CEO, Steve Jobs, I found both thought provoking and inspiring. In the article, Rohit mentions that he is inspired by “actions” not “people”.  Then, the article goes on to explain how Jobs had the ability to attract “an army of smart people and help them create something real… products that affected how we experience the world.”  You can find my Digg at http://digg.com/news/business/influential_marketing_blog_what_steve_jobs_really_gave_us

Myself, I find vision inspiring. I find taking your concept of new technology and creating a computer operating system that radically differs from the current form, visionary.  Founding a company of three employees, to compete with a company partnered with IBM, and establish a lion’s share of the market within five years, I find visionary. Identifying a revolutionary animation technology, Pixar, purchasing it, and partnering it with the most prestigious, world-wide distributor of animated films, Walt Disney Company, is visionary.

Rohit states that Jobs was passionate.  I suggest that it was his vision that drove the passion and desire.  He had the ability to communicate that vision so that others understood it as clearly as he did. They could perceive why he was involved in the day to day work, how he had the ability to tweak the products in minute ways to make them better. And they shared that vision through the confidence that Jobs had when he introduced those products to the world.

I think the simplicity mentioned in the article can be explained by his vision as well. If you can already see the outcome, it makes the path getting there seem clear, simplified. It explains his ability to strip away everything that is not important, and focus on those things that support your vision. So this brings me to the final point - purpose.  

It was how Rohit describes Steve Jobs' purpose that inspired me most. It defines, with utmost clarity, the vision that Jobs had for Apple as their CEO. He defines the vision, the purpose and the mission statement of the company, exemplified in one person, in a way that I had never taken the time to reflect on. And as so often with commemorations, “don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.”