Wednesday 30 May 2012

Management style

Jobs was a demanding perfectionist[107][108] who always aspired to position his businesses and their products at the forefront of the information technology industry by foreseeing and setting trends, at least in innovation and style. He summed up that self-concept at the end of his keynote speech at the Macworld Conference and Expo in January 2007, by quoting ice hockey player Wayne Gretzky There's an old Wayne Gretzky quote that I love. 'I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.' And we've always tried to do that at Apple. Since the very very beginning. And we always will.[109] Steve Jobs announcing the transition to Intel processors in 2005. Much was made of Jobs's aggressive and demanding personality. Fortune wrote that he was "considered one of Silicon Valley's leading egomaniacs".[110] Commentaries on his temperamental style can be found in Michael Moritz's The Little Kingdom, The Second Coming of Steve Jobs, by Alan Deutschman; and iCon: Steve Jobs, by Jeffrey S. Young & William L. Simon. In 1993, Jobs made Fortune's list of America's Toughest Bosses in regard to his leadership of NeXT. NeXT Cofounder Dan'l Lewin was quoted in Fortune as saying of that period, "The highs were unbelievable ... But the lows were unimaginable", to which Jobs's office replied that his personality had changed since then.[111] In 2005, Jobs banned all books published by John Wiley & Sons from Apple Stores in response to their publishing an unauthorized biography, iCon: Steve Jobs.[112] In its 2010 annual earnings report, Wiley said it had "closed a deal ... to make its titles available for the iPad."[113] Jef Raskin, a former colleague, once said that Jobs "would have made an excellent king of France", alluding to Jobs's compelling and larger-than-life persona.[114] Floyd Norman said that at Pixar, Jobs was a "mature, mellow individual" and never interfered with the creative process of the filmmakers.[115] Jobs had a public war of words with Dell Computer CEO Michael Dell, starting in 1987 when Jobs first criticized Dell for making "un-innovative beige boxes".[116] On October 6, 1997, in a Gartner Symposium, when Michael Dell was asked what he would do if he ran then-troubled Apple Computer, he said "I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders."[117] In 2006, Jobs sent an email to all employees when Apple's market capitalization rose above Dell's. The email read: Team, it turned out that Michael Dell wasn't perfect at predicting the future. Based on today's stock market close, Apple is worth more than Dell. Stocks go up and down, and things may be different tomorrow, but I thought it was worth a moment of reflection today. Steve.[118] Jobs was also a board member at Gap Inc. from 1999 to 2002.[119]

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