Before understanding who he was and how he was different first lets have a look at the company APPLE.While most high-tech firms focus on one or two sectors, Apple does all of them at once. Apple makes its own hardware (i Books and i Macs), it makes the operating system that runs on that hardware (Mac OS X), and it makes programs that run on that operating system (i Tunes, i Movie, Safari Web browser, etc.). It also makes the consumer-electronics devices that connect to all those things (the rapidly multiplying i Pod family), and it runs the online service that furnishes content to those devices (i Tunes Music Store). If you bring together Microsoft, Dell and Sony into one company, you would have something like the diversity of the Apple.If you go by the market wisdom Apple is doing it all wrong. Its is often said that new and better things arise as a result of freedom and open competition, but Apple is essentially operating its own closed domain.Still Apple has an aura of its own.Reason - only one man can tell Steve Jobs himself. He is one of the technology world's great innovators but not because he's an engineer or a programmer. He doesn't have an M.B.A. either. He doesn't even have a college degree. (He dropped out of Reed College after one semester.) Jobs has a great native sense of design and a knack for hiring geniuses, but above all, what he has is a willingness to be a pain in the neck about what matters most to him.
Though, he is perfectly pleasant to be around, he pays attention to what you're saying, but if he disagrees with it--if, hypothetically, you're maybe supporting the fact that i Macs have all their ports in the back, where they're hard to get at--he'll come storming back and hammer at you until you change your mind or at least shut up.That's how you define supremacy.I hope our PM could take some lessons from him :P.
One reason Apple makes its own hardware and software is that when Jobs goes to the trouble of creating a piece of software, he doesn't want it running on hardware built by a bunch of dudes he doesn't know and can't fire. He wants it on hardware he makes himself. How else can he be sure that every little thing integrates together the way he insists--it should. According to him, if one company makes the software, the other makes the hardware ... It's not working,The innovation can't happen fast enough. The integration isn't seamless enough. No one takes responsibility for the user interface. It's a mess.
But you can't say that is the only way to run a business. Look at Microsoft. Bill Gates focused on operating systems. He didn't worry about hardware. He gave Windows to anybody who could give him a licensing fee, and he let them worry about hardware. Result? He devoured the market and made the biggest killing in the history of killings. Apple kept its Mac operating system on Apple hardware almost exclusively. It may have won a technological victory,but business-wise, he is still behind.
But Jobs doesn't care just about winning. He's willing to lose.He's just not willing to be lame, and that may, increasingly, be his unique approach. The i Pod proved that design and ease of use are at least as important as increased functionality, and the i Tunes Music Store proved that goes for smoothly integrating physical devices with online services too.You may be top of the world in terms of business but for a moral victory, a victory of faith you have to be self sustainable. The world economies who encounter enormous fluctuation one day or the other should learn from this. This is how bureaucrats should focus on development.Its not always that the most profitable nations are the ones who are most appreciated.
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