“We’re here to put a dent in the universe,” said Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Computer and then chairman and CEO of Apple Inc. Today, all personal computers incorporate a version of the mouse-driven graphical user interface that Jobs perfected and popularized. The guiding spirit behind the Macintosh computer, iPod, iPad, iPhone and iTunes, Jobs is an American corporate legend. Few people worked more closely with him than Jay Elliot, a former senior vice president at Apple. In this business biography, written before Jobs died, Elliot and co-author William L. Simon detail Jobs’s corporate achievements, his attention to product detail and his visionary leadership. Their revealing profile to those compelled by or curious about the genius of Jobs.

1. Some Impressionistic takes from the book
Jay Elliot’s & William L.Simon
“The Steve Jobs Way
i leadership for a new generation”
by Ramki
ramaddster@gmail.com

2. Steve Jobs is as much an icon of the information age as the iMacs, iPods, iPads and
iPhones that Apple has been launching ever so frequently in recent years. He is also a
controversial entrepreneur. — Business magazine Fortune once said he is considered one
of Silicon Valley’s ‘leading egomaniacs’ — and both authorized and unauthorized
biographies of the Buddhist business magnate and inventor are aplenty.
Jay Elliot, author of The Steve Jobs Way: iLeadership for a new generation, is perhaps
one of the closest associates of the founder and CEO of one of the most outstanding
companies in history to have written a book on him. Mr. Elliot, who worked with Mr. Jobs
as senior vice-president of Apple, leverages his ‘deep insider perspective’ of his boss’s
‘singular iLeadership style', encompassing four major principles: product, talent,
organization and marketing
The book is full of interesting anecdotes relating to Mr Jobs, his interactions with his
colleagues, the big fights he had with some top executives, including John Sculley, the
former PepsiCo president, who replaced him as the CEO following a painful power
struggle in the mid- 1980s. But the ‘Sculley era’ saw the decline of Apple, leading one
international magazine to label Mr Sculley as “the 14th worst American CEO of all time”.
Happy Reading
Prelude

3. Learning’s from the book
 Why Steve Jobs is in a class by himself.
 How Steve Jobs runs an organization that brings
such convenience, timesaving and pleasure to so
many people around the world.
 How Steve Jobs’ unique leadership style has
forever changed our everyday lives and the world
around us.
 How to shift your paradigm and get your
organization to shift with you

4. Jay Elliot
 One of the close associate of Steve jobs
 Worked as Senior VP of Apple
iLeadership
 4 Major Principles : Product, Talent,
Organization & Marketing
First Meeting
 ‘Hippie looking ‘ , twenties in Jeans &
sneakers
 Fire eater, busting with energy and
lighting up at the idea
The Book
 Is full of experiences, mind boggling
situations, big fights ,power struggles
and iLeadership
The Steve Jobs way- ILeadership for a new generation

5.  The idea fell from a tree, literally.
 Steve Jobs had returned from visiting a commune-like place in Oregon located in
an apple orchard. Apple co-founder and Jobs’ pal, Steve Wozniak, picked him up
from the airport.
 On the drive home, Jobs simply said, “I came up with a name for our company—
Apple.” Wozniak said they could have tried to come up with more technical
sounding names but their vision was to make computers approachable.
 Apple fit perfectly

6. Innovation distinguishes between a Leader & a follower
It was called a “graphical user interface.” In that moment, Jobs knew that this
technology would allow him to fulfill his vision of putting a computer in the hands of
everyday people. Jobs later said that Xerox could have “dominated” the computer
industry but instead its ‘vision’ was limited to building another copier.
Two people can see the same thing but perceive it differently based on their vision.

7. 1
Product Czar

8. Passion for Product
Driving force for iPhone development
 Steve Jobs is the World’s greatest consumer
 He breathed his life into “ Macintosh” – as computer for rest
of us .
 Stirred the iTunes store & the iPod into being out of his love
for music & desire to take the music everywhere with him.
 Loved the convenience of the cell , but hated the heavy,
clumsy, ugly and hard to use phones in the market.
 That dissatisfaction led to his giving himself & the rest of the
iPhone.

9. Passion for Product
 Steve Jobs survives, thrives and changes society by
following his own passions
 I could be doing a lot of other things with my life
 But Macintosh is going to change the world
 I have chosen people for the team who believe it.
 His passion goes through the entire organization –
receptionist to engineers to the board of directors
 Employees of any company do not feel
this passion as passed on from the
leaders , then the leaders needs to be
asking “ Why not” ?

10. From drawing board to delivery
 As his own product czar, Steve wore a dazzling number of
hats in the Macintosh team.
 Starting with product conceiver-in-chief.
 From the drawing board to delivery, he inhabited the product,
living every detail of what it would experience as if it were a
living, breathing organism.
 He knew he had to be surrounded by people as invested in
achieving excellence in the products as he himself was.
 His passion is one of the great underlying secrets of Steve’s
success. He is exacting, demanding and, yes, at times,
inconsiderate. It’s all a reflection of the fiery passion that
drives him.

11. Success is in details
 Steve Jobs had his best engineers working on the top-secret
project to develop the iPhone
 He had to wage a battle. Trying to create a cell phone
product was a monumental effort for a company with no
background in the field.
 One of his big reasons for taking on this unlikely challenge
was that every cell phone he had ever seen was, in his view,
far too complicated to use
 A perfect challenge for a man so dedicated to detail and to
its companion quality, simplicity.
 Steve had decided early on that the cell phone being
developed at Apple would have only a single button.

12. Success is in details
 His engineers kept telling him over and over in their once-or-
twice-a-week review meetings that it was not possible for a
cell phone to have only one button.
 You could not turn it on and off, control the volume, switch
between functions, go to the Internet and use all the other
features the phone was to have, if you had only a single
control button.
 Steve was deaf to their complaints. He kept demanding, in
effect, “The phone will have only one button. Figure it out.”
 Though he has, through the years, been an incredible solver
of problems and originator of clever ideas on all the products
developed under him.

13. Success is in details
 Steve didn’t know how the phone could be designed so it
would need only one button. But as the ultimate consumer,
he knew that’s what he wanted. He kept sending the
engineers back with the demand that they figure out the
necessary solutions.
 You know the end of the story: The original iPhone had only
one control button

14. Success is in details
 Creativity & innovation;
 More work, More detail-oriented planning
 Learning from mistakes.
 Details matter, it’s worth waiting to get it right,
but there are times when you have to weigh
the benefit of getting it right the cost of being
late to market.

15. Holistic Product development
 Today, most products of any complexity —
as well as a lot of very simple ones —
include components or ingredients not
created on-site but purchased elsewhere,
from some other company.
 It’s why the rim at the top of the can of Gillette shaving cream
always turns rusty: Gillette makes the shaving cream but
buys the cans from a supplier — a nameless manufacturing
company that doesn’t have to take any flak from Gillette
customers.
 And one wonders whether Gillette’s top managers aren’t
using their own product; if they were, wouldn’t they have
corrected the problem a long time ago?

16. Product Czar
 Passion for the Idea, Product & Perfection
 If you are not passionate from the start you will never stick it
out
 Creativity, Innovation and more detail oriented planning
 Details matter, it’s worth waiting to get it right.
 But there are times when you have to weigh the benefit of
getting it right & the cost of being late to market
Passion is everything. Innovation—which simply means—new ways of
doing things that improve our lives---cannot flourish unless you are truly
obsessed with making something better—be it a product, a service, a
method or a career.

17. How to do find your passion? Passions are those ideas that don’t
leave you alone. They are the hopes, dreams and possibilities
that consume your thoughts. Follow those passions despite
skeptics and naysayers who do not have the courage to follow
their dreams.

18. 2
Talent Rules

19. Talent Rules
 Team culture is important & key differentiator
 Product focused team
 Master the team building into Art form
 Learning to acknowledge a bad decision & move ahead
 Seek people who are interested about the project
 Talent finds Talent
Jobs has followed his heart his entire career and that passion, he says, has
made all the difference. It’s very difficult to come up with new, creative ideas
that move society forward if you are not passionate about the subject.

20. When Jobs returned to Apple in 1997 after a 12-year absence, Apple faced an
uncertain future. Jobs closed his presentation that year at Macworld in Boston with an
observation that set the tone for Apple’s resurgence: “I think you have to think
differently to buy an Apple computer. A lot of times people think they’re crazy, but in
that craziness we see genius.”

21. 3
Team Sports

22. Team Sports
 Best of time & worst of times
 Leadership search
 Noticing signs of conflict
 Public face of your product
 Seek people who are interested about the project
 New ideas can be soothe friction or ignite them
Passion fuels the rocket, but vision points the rocket to its ultimate
destination.

23. Team Sports- Maintaining Momentum
 Next opportunity ; next
product
 Remaking of the company
 Recovering from the disaster
 Creating a product that
reflects the principles of the
creator
 Maintaining the momentum
in the face of failures
He stayed another 18 months to “drop in” to those classes he enjoyed, like
calligraphy. Calligraphy didn’t have any obvious practical application in his life
but it would come back to Jobs when he created the Mac..

24. Team Sports- Evangelizing Innovation
 Collaboration, Control &
Inspire
 Ignite the sense of doing
something novel, something
better and something special
 Do more than you imagine,
embrace the group creativity
& Innovation
 Think different
Creativity leads to innovative ideas. Jobs believes that a broad set of
experiences expands our understanding of the human experience. A broader
understanding leads to breakthroughs that others may have missed.
Breakthrough innovation requires creativity and creativity requires that you
think differently about…the way you think.

25. “My model for business is The Beatles.
They were four guys who kept each other’s
kind of negative tendencies in check.
They balanced each other and the total was
greater than the sum of the parts.
That’s how I see business: great things in
business are never done by one person,
they’re done by a team of people.”
You can have the most innovative idea in the world, but if you can’t get people
excited about it, it doesn’t matter. Steve Jobs is considered one of the greatest
corporate storytellers in the world because his presentations inform, educate and
entertain.

26. Steve Jobs creates new ideas precisely because he has spent a lifetime exploring new
and unrelated things—seeking out diverse experiences. Jobs hired people from outside
the computing profession, he studied the art of calligraphy in college, meditated in an
Indian ashram, and evaluated The Four Seasons hotel chain as he developed the
customer service model for the Apple Stores. Look outside your industry for inspiration.

27. 4
Becoming Cool
A different view of selling

28.  Steve Jobs is master craftsman’s.
 Ability to create a consistent, positive product image in the
minds of his customers.
 He combines stick-to-itiveness with an intuitive sense of
exactly what it takes to get the public enthralled with a
product.
 He understands that this isn’t just a question of how well
the product is designed and how smoothly it works —
although these are critical factors — but of how it is
perceived by the user, which, of course, is the key to
product success.
Becoming Cool

29. Becoming Cool
 Apple as a Brand synonymous to Cool
 Putting the Brand in people
 Riding the Retail innovation with
 Apple Online Stores
 Achieving the definition of cool
Your customers don’t care about your product, your company or your brand.
They care about themselves, their hopes, their dreams, their ambitions. Help
them fulfill their dreams and you will win them over.

30. Achieving the definition of cool
 There is nothing more cool in the world of business than
creating a product that millions of people immediately want,
and many who don’t have are envious of those who do.
 Nothing more cool than being a person who can imagine and
create a product like that.
 Add one more element: creating a series of these way cool
products not as separate and isolated efforts but all parts of a
high-level overriding concept.

31. Steve Jobs doesn’t rely on focus groups. If he had, they may never have
enjoyed iPods, iTunes, the iPhone, the iPad, or Apple Stores. Jobs does not
need focus groups because he understands his customers really, really well.
Yes, sometimes better than they know themselves!
Steve Jobs reduced complexity in
the Smartphone category by
eliminating the keyboard

32. Steve Jobs thinks visually about presenting ideas, products, and
information.

33. Customer Experience
Jobs has made the Apple Store the gold standard in customer service by
introducing simple innovations any business can adopt to create deeper,
more emotional connections with their customers. For example, there are no
cashiers in an Apple store. There are experts, consultants, even geniuses,
but no cashiers.

34. You can’t just ask customers what they want & then they try
to give that to them. By that time you get it built, they’ll want
something new “
On becoming Stevian

35. “Design is a funny word.
Some people think design means
how it looks. But of course, if you
dig deeper, it’s really how
it works.”

36. “As technology becomes more complex,
Apple’s core strength of knowing how to
make very sophisticated technology
Look “Simple” is in even greater demand.”

37. “I always considered part of my job
was to keep the quality level of
people in the organization I work
with very high ...”

38. “… That’s what I consider one of the few
things I actually can contribute individually
to—to really try to instill in the organization
the goal of having ‘A’ players. In everything
I’ve done it really pays to go after the best
people in the world

39. “Many times in an [job] interview I will
purposely upset someone: I’ll criticize
their prior work. I’ll do my homework, find
out what they worked on, and say, ‘God,
that really turned out to be a bomb. That
really turned out to be a bozo product.
Why did you work on that?’ ...”

40. “The [innovation] system is that there is no
system. That’s doesn’t mean we don’t have
process. Apple is a very disciplined
company, and we have great processes. But
that’s not what it’s about. Process makes
you more efficient.”

41. “Innovation has nothing to do with how
many R&D dollars you have. When Apple
came up with the Mac, IBM was spending
at least 100 times more on R&D. It’s not
about money. It’s about the people you
have, how you’re led, and how much you
get.”

42. 5
Steve Jobs Best Quotes

43. Dream Bigger
Perhaps the ultimate lesson that Jobs teaches us is that innovation requires risk-taking
and risk taking takes courage and a bit of craziness. See genius in your craziness.
Believe in yourself and your vision and be prepared to constantly defend those beliefs.
Only then will innovation be allowed to flourish and only then will you be able to lead an
“insanely great” life.

45. Steve Jobs has something to teach you about your career, your business, and
your brand. He thinks differently about every aspect of business – from product
design to marketing to communications. Here are the 7 principles responsible
for Jobs’ breakthrough success.

46. Innovation takes confidence, boldness , craziness and the
discipline to tune out negative voices.

47. You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them
looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow
connect in your future.
You have to trust in something; your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever.
This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference
in my life

49. Follow your heart
“Your work is going to
fill a large part of your
life, and the only way to
be truly satisfied is to do
what you believe is great
work. And the only way
to do great work is to
love what you do. If you
haven’t found it yet, keep
looking. Don’t settle.”

50. Make a dent in the
Universe
“ Being the richest man
in the cemetery doesn't
matter to me … going to
bed at night saying we
have done something
wonderful .. That ‘s what
matters to me”

51. Keep it Simple
“That’s been one of my
mantras-focus &
simplicity . Simple can be
harder than complex: You
have to work hard to get
your thinking clean to
make it simple. But it’s
worth it in the end
because once you get
there, you can move
mountains.”

52. Break the Rules
“Here’s to the crazy ones, the
misfits, the rebels, the
troublemakers, the round pegs
in the square holes… the ones
who see things differently -
they’re not fond of rules…
because the ones who are
crazy enough to think that they
can change the world, are the
ones who do.”

53. 6
Steve & Others

55. “ People Sometime have goals in life.
Steve Jobs exceeded every goal he set
himself “– Steve Woznaik
"Steve and I first met nearly 30 years ago,
and have been colleagues, competitors
and friends over the course of more than
half our lives. The world rarely sees
someone who has had the profound
impact Steve has had, the effects of which
will be felt for many generations to come.
For those of us lucky enough to get to work
with him, it's been an insanely great
honor." -Bill Gates

56. Summary –Steve Jobs Principles
 Be passionate about each project you work on.
 Be driven by an opportunity and create a product for it.
 Always be open to talent who can help.
 Do your best to make the product intuitive, so a user’s manual isn’t
needed.
 Be really honest with yourself about your products.
 Ensure that the products represent you and your traits as a person.
 Work through your people and celebrate as a unit with every
success.
 Keep innovating to get closer and closer to your ideal, your vision
of perfection that goes beyond the currently achievable reality.
 Don’t listen to people who say it can’t be done.

57. Happy Reading