Share This

Showing posts with label Steve Jobs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Steve Jobs. Show all posts

Friday, January 18, 2013

Innovation not the same as invention, the difference here...

Innovation practitioners know that they should not listen to the experts who approach life with rigid blinkers that prevent them from visualising anything outside their conditioned minds.


TAKING a leaf out of what our Prime Minister wrote in this space two weeks ago, innovative thinking is undoubtedly a significant driver in propelling the nation’s economy to new heights. It is imperative that Malaysians embrace a culture of innovation.

But let’s take a step or two back, before we can begin to move forward. It is important to pin down exactly what innovation means. Several readers have asked me if innovation is the same as invention, especially after reading about Malaysian researchers winning awards for their inventions. In fact, although they may appear similar at first glance, upon closer inspection both are very different indeed.

If you make something unique or original, that’s an invention. Whether the invention has value or not is immaterial. This is why we see whacky inventions like toothbrushes for dogs or a clip-on fan on chopsticks to cool down noodles. Both these examples are unique and original but offer little value to most citizens.

Innovation demands creating additional value, even though a product or service may not be unique or original. The innovator must first unravel customer needs, and then figure out how to inject greater value at different parts of the solution. Let’s look at two examples.

Forty-five years ago, the radical economist and philosopher E.F. Schumacher formed an NGO called Practical Action to help people in developing countries help themselves. Practical Action states that more than 1.6 million people in developing countries die of diseases and accidents caused by cooking and heating fires in homes. This is not surprising, given that one third of humanity still uses rudimentary stoves fuelled by wood, charcoal or dung.

Liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) is a viable solution as it costs less than wood or charcoal, but most villagers cannot afford the stoves. Some African countries have implemented an innovative “revolving fund” credit system that allows villagers to buy stoves. It works exactly like the “kutu” scheme prevalent in Malaysia for decades, although illegally. Ten households get together and form a fund, with each household contributing a fixed amount to the fund each month, for 10 months.

Every month, one household collects the contributions that month to buy a stove. The following month, another household gets the total contributions to buy their stove. Households draw lots to see who will get the fund over the next 10 months. Within 10 months, all 10 households get their LPG stove. Now imagine adapting this idea to meet the needs of entire communities and you see the power of this innovative funding system. No handouts or subsidies from the government and no bank loans either – the villagers help themselves, through innovation. This is a common sense solution, not rocket science. To be precise, this is innovation.

Let’s look at the second example. Does the number of new books that hit the bookshelves every month overwhelm you? It was predicted that the Internet would spell the death of the printed word, but in fact the reverse has happened. There are now more books in print than at any other time in history. How does one keep up?

As it is commonly known, a number of innovative online companies have found a practical solution to this. For a small fee, these companies provide a short summary of a book containing all the essential ideas presented in the book. Most people can read these summaries in 15 minutes, making it possible to read at least one book each day. This “compressed knowledge” is another example of innovation.

Ultimately, innovation is not confined to technologies, products or services. You can have innovation at every stage of the business cycle – from manufacturing to distribution to sales to post-sales support.

Just look at Nike, the world’s largest supplier of athletic shoes and apparel. It does not own a single manufacturing factory, but focuses on innovation in design and marketing. Another well-known example is DHL, a world-leading courier and logistics company that relies on innovation to accurately ship a document or parcel from the point of origin to its destination.

For you to benefit and profit from innovation, you have to dissect your business or activity into its key pieces or “parts”. The “eco-system” must be correctly identified, as dealing with just one part of the problem or value-chain is unlikely to bring satisfactory results. Nothing exists in isolation and even seemingly unconnected things are actually connected, so a “village” or holistic approach to innovation is necessary.

For each piece or part, you have to ask a fundamental question: How can I do this better, so that the outcome is greater than it is now – at a lower cost? Your brain will rebel at first and tell you that it cannot be done. Don’t listen to your brain; it is a lazy device looking for the easiest way out. Innovation practitioners know that the last person you should listen to is your own self. Don’t listen to the experts either, for they approach life with rigid blinkers that prevent them from visualising anything outside their conditioned minds.

Adopt a child-like disposition and question the assumptions that you and others have taken for granted. Persist until you have questioned each and every aspect of all the pieces of the puzzle and found answers that are uncommon.

This sounds easy, but it is the most difficult step as it questions all the sacred cows lurking in your belief system. Done correctly, however, it can lead to breakthrough innovations.
If you have been through this process, share your stories with me at kamal@pmo.gov.my so that other readers can benefit from your lessons too.

The Star Ignite
By DATUK SERI DR KAMAL JIT SINGH

> Unit Inovasi Khas CEO Datuk Seri Dr Kamal Jit Singh is hoping to jolt Malaysians out of complacency.

 

The Difference Between 'Invention' and 'Innovation'


Two and a half years ago, I co-founded Stroome, a collaborative online video editing and publishing platform and 2010 Knight News Challenge winner.

From its inception, the site received a tremendous amount of attention. The New School, USC Annenberg, the Online News Association and, ultimately, the Knight Foundation all saw something interesting in what we were doing. We won awards; we were invited to present at conferences; we were written about in the trades and featured in over 150 blogs. Yet despite all the accolades, not once did the word "invention" creep in. "Innovation," it turns out, was the word on everyone's lips.

Like so many up-and-coming entrepreneurs, I was under the impression that invention and innovation were one and the same. They aren't. And, as I have discovered, the distinction is an important one.

Recently, I was asked by Jason Nazar, founder of Docstoc and a big supporter of the L.A. entrepreneurial community, if I would help define the difference between the two. A short, 3-minute video response can be found at the bottom of this post, but I thought I'd share some key takeaways with you here:

INVENTION VS. INNOVATION: THE DIFFERENCE


In its purest sense, "invention" can be defined as the creation of a product or introduction of a process for the first time. "Innovation," on the other hand, occurs if someone improves on or makes a significant contribution to an existing product, process or service.

Consider the microprocessor. Someone invented the microprocessor. But by itself, the microprocessor was nothing more than another piece on the circuit board. It's what was done with that piece -- the hundreds of thousands of products, processes and services that evolved from the invention of the microprocessor -- that required innovation.

STEVE JOBS: THE POSTER BOY OF INNOVATION


If ever there were a poster child for innovation it would be former Apple CEO Steve Jobs. And when people talk about innovation, Jobs' iPod is cited as an example of innovation at its best.

steve jobs iphone4.jpg But let's take a step back for a minute. The iPod wasn't the first portable music device (Sony popularized the "music anywhere, anytime" concept 22 years earlier with the Walkman); the iPod wasn't the first device that put hundreds of songs in your pocket (dozens of manufacturers had MP3 devices on the market when the iPod was released in 2001); and Apple was actually late to the party when it came to providing an online music-sharing platform. (Napster, Grokster and Kazaa all preceded iTunes.)

So, given those sobering facts, is the iPod's distinction as a defining example of innovation warranted? Absolutely.

What made the iPod and the music ecosystem it engendered innovative wasn't that it was the first portable music device. It wasn't that it was the first MP3 player. And it wasn't that it was the first company to make thousands of songs immediately available to millions of users. What made Apple innovative was that it combined all of these elements -- design, ergonomics and ease of use -- in a single device, and then tied it directly into a platform that effortlessly kept that device updated with music.

Apple invented nothing. Its innovation was creating an easy-to-use ecosystem that unified music discovery, delivery and device. And, in the process, they revolutionized the music industry.

IBM: INNOVATION'S UGLY STEPCHILD


 Admittedly, when it comes to corporate culture, Apple and IBM are worlds apart. But Apple and IBM aren't really as different as innovation's poster boy would have had us believe.

Truth is if it hadn't been for one of IBM's greatest innovations -- the personal computer -- there would have been no Apple. Jobs owes a lot to the introduction of the PC. And IBM was the company behind it.

Ironically, the IBM PC didn't contain any new inventions per se (see iPod example above). Under pressure to complete the project in less than 18 months, the team actually was under explicit instructions not to invent anything new. The goal of the first PC, code-named "Project Chess," was to take off-the-shelf components and bring them together in a way that was user friendly, inexpensive, and powerful.

And while the world's first PC was an innovative product in the aggregate, the device they created -- a portable device that put powerful computing in the hands of the people -- was no less impactful than Henry Ford's Model T, which reinvented the automobile industry by putting affordable transportation in the hands of the masses.

INNOVATION ALONE IS NOT ENOUGH


Given the choice to invent or innovate, most entrepreneurs would take the latter. Let's face it, innovation is just sexier. Perhaps there are a few engineers at M.I.T. who can name the members of "Project Chess." Virtually everyone on the planet knows who Steve Jobs is.

But innovation alone isn't enough. Too often, companies focus on a technology instead of the customer's problem. But in order to truly turn a great idea into a world-changing innovation, other factors must be taken into account.

According to Venkatakrishnan Balasubramanian, a research analyst with Infosys Labs, the key to ensuring that innovation is successful is aligning your idea with the strategic objectives and business models of your organization.

In a recent article that appeared in Innovation Management, he offered five considerations:
1. Competitive advantage: Your innovation should provide a unique competitive position for the enterprise in the marketplace;
2. Business alignment: The differentiating factors of your innovation should be conceptualized around the key strategic focus of the enterprise and its goals;
3. Customers: Knowing the customers who will benefit from your innovation is paramount;
4. Execution: Identifying resources, processes, risks, partners and suppliers and the ecosystem in the market for succeeding in the innovation is equally important;
5. Business value: Assessing the value (monetary, market size, etc.) of the innovation and how the idea will bring that value into the organization is a critical underlying factor in selecting which idea to pursue.
Said another way, smart innovators frame their ideas to stress the ways in which a new concept is compatible with the existing market landscape, and their company's place in that marketplace.

This adherence to the "status quo" may sound completely antithetical to the concept of innovation. But an idea that requires too much change in an organization, or too much disruption to the marketplace, may never see the light of day.

A FINAL THOUGHT


While they tend to be lumped together, "invention" and "innovation" are not the same thing. There are distinctions between them, and those distinctions are important.

So how do you know if you are inventing or innovating? Consider this analogy:

If invention is a pebble tossed in the pond, innovation is the rippling effect that pebble causes. Someone has to toss the pebble. That's the inventor. Someone has to recognize the ripple will eventually become a wave. That's the entrepreneur.

Entrepreneurs don't stop at the water's edge. They watch the ripples and spot the next big wave before it happens. And it's the act of anticipating and riding that "next big wave" that drives the innovative nature in every entrepreneur.



Tom Grasty By Tom Grasty This article is the seventh of 10 video segments in which digital entrepreneur Tom Grasty talks about his experience building an Internet startup, and is part of a larger initiative sponsored by docstoc.videos, which features advice from small business owners who offer their views on how to launch a new business or grow your existing one altogether.

Related posts:

Who invented bank deposit insurance?


Related Videos:










Monday, August 6, 2012

Chinese Tech Billionaire To Launch Next Xiaomi Smartphone

All will be revealed (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Chinese smartphone startup Xiaomi has confirmed that it will unveil its new model in Beijing on Aug. 16, a year after the launch of its debut MI-1. The Android-based phone has sold over 3 million units and put Xiaomi and its billionaire cofounder Lei Jun on the global smartphone map. A Xiaomi spokesman refused to discuss the phone’s features, telling FORBES that all would be revealed on Aug. 16. A report on Sohu.com last week claimed that the new phone would use a Qualcomm quad-core 1.5GHz chip with a 4.3″ display touchscreen. Interestingly, Xiaomi may be raising its price to RMB2,499 ($392), compared to RMB1,999 for the first-generation phone. Lei initially told reporters that he didn’t expect to make a profit from handset sales, but surging shipments upended that calculation and boosted Xiaomi’s valuation to $4 billion in a recent funding round. You can read my profile of Lei here.

In a research note, Brian White of Topeka Capital Markets notes that Xiaomi recorded $995 million in sales for 1H 2012 and that China’s smartphone market continues to post rapid growth.
During our travels to China, we have noticed a surge in the popularity of Xiaomi smartphones and already the Company is a top-five vendor at a leading service provider in the country. The Company’s smartphones seem to be especially popular with the younger crowd due to their cutting edge design with high- energy color patterns.
Photos of Xiaomi’s new phone’s eco-packaging, though not what’s inside the box, have been posted to Lei’s microblog. Lei is famous for Steve Jobs-style product presentations that play to his geek fans in China (and infuriate his detractors). He will be out to prove that Xiaomi hasn’t sat still over the last year but is building a better phone with an integrated software experience for users. However, a jump to RMB2,499 would be a bold step, as smartphone prices in China are heading the other way, i.e. cheaper and cheaper. Apple and Samsung occupy the top rungs of smartphone chic, where a high sticker price doesn’t deter avid buyers. Xiaomi wants to carve out a mid-tier position where its brand carries weight. Its new phone will be a crucial part of that strategy.

Simon Montlake
By Simon Montlake, Forbes Staff

Newscribe : get free news in real time 

Saturday, December 24, 2011

Tech CEOs 2011: The best and the worst



by Charles Cooper, CNET

Armchair critics of the world rejoice. It's time to select the year's best and worst tech CEOs. It's a judgment that some no doubt will lambaste as arbitrary, even biased. On both counts we plead guilty. So if you have candidates for either category, or take issue with our choices, add your voice in the talkback section below. 

THE HEROES
Steve Jobs and Tim Cook 

Skip to the next section if you're thoroughly sick of reading about how Apple keeps hitting the ball out of the park. Truth be told, it was more fun in the mid-1990s when Apple was Silicon Valley's running soap opera. Nowadays the company operates with the sort of steamroller efficiency epitomized by the 1927 New York Yankees led by Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. And for that, you have to credit the CEO tandem of the late Steve Jobs and his successor -- and alter ego -- Tim Cook.

Tim Cook sitting at Steve Jobs' right at an event in 2007.
(Credit: James Martin/CNET)
 
Jobs may be gone but his influence at Apple remains in the management team and product design philosophy that he left behind. Even though illness forced Apple's legendary co-founder to relinquish the reins to Cook in late August, his half-year as CEO was still better than full-year performances turned in by most of his peers. This wasn't an overnight handover. Whenever Jobs needed to take a step back, Cook was in the unique position of receiving extended on-the-job training, and whatever rough patches he might have encountered were well hidden behind Apple's carefully constructed PR screen. All the while, Cook got to learn first-hand from the tech industry's master marketer how it's done.



What a shame Jobs wasn't healthy enough to introduce the iPhone 4S. How the fan boys would have swooned when he offered them the first look at Siri. Cook's not a matinee idol and he doesn't try to be. Maybe that explains the relatively muted reaction to what was otherwise a very successful product debut. Some quibbled that the lines in front of Apple stores were smaller than for previous releases. But the bloggers and reporters who get hung up by the different style are making a big deal out of the trivial. Like Jobs, Cook has offered the leadership that you'd expect from a strong CEO. He more than justified Jobs' confidence as Apple's iPhones, iPads and iMacs continued to sell at a torrid clip in the second half of 2011, sending the company's shares are up more than 17 percent year-to-date, beating both the Nasdaq index and S&P 500.

The question everyone is asking is whether Cook can muster the magic on his own now that he's flying solo. Maybe we'll find out the answer in 2012. But so far, this rates as one of the most seamless managerial handovers in corporate history. And one of the most successful.

President Obama chats with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
President Obama chats with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in February. (Credit: The White House)

Mark Zuckerberg

Here's one way to think about how entrenched Facebook has become in the cultural lexicon: When someone decides they actually want to leave everyone's favorite social network grid, this now qualifies as "news." That is no small accomplishment. Even though Google now offers its own rival service, Facebook remains by a wide margin the preferred social network for revelers, revolutionaries, and just plain folk posting their musings, pictures, and videos uploads.

Wall Street has apparently decided that Facebook is not of this world, according it a pre-IPO valuation now north of $80 billion. But somehow the peanut gallery remains reluctant to give Mark Zuckerberg his full due for building a magnificent platform. Yes, he's profiled in business magazines and gets sought out for interviews by everyone from Charlie Rose to "60 Minutes." But when you listen to discussions of the great CEOs of Silicon Valley, you're more likely to hear mention of John Chambers, who had Cisco buy the company that makes the Flip video camera for $590 million and then shut the division less than two years later. The worst Zuckerberg ever did is get sloppy with privacy controls, a faux pas that some within the blogosphere may never forgive.

But as 2011 closes, it's time to give it up for the Z-man. Through the years he has remained true to his vision and resisted sundry offers to sell out. Back in 2006, when he was approached with a $750 million offer, more than a few people thought he should take the money and run. Who was Zuckerberg and what was Facebook to think they could outrun then-juggernaut MySpace? But five years later, MySpace is irrelevant, while Facebook has over 750 million active users and earned $500 million on $1.6 billion of revenue during the first half of 2011.

Like Bill Gates, an entrepreneur who managed very well as CEO at a young age, Zuckerberg is growing into the role (helped in no small part by his able No. 2, Sheryl Sandberg.). The best example came this fall when he put a potentially distracting privacy fight with the government in the rear view mirror instead of venting publicly about government persecution. He's familiar with Microsoft's less than happy experience battling Uncle Sam and wisely ordered Facebook to strike a deal with the Federal Trade Commission that should put this issue to bed.

Zuckerberg can't go on auto-pilot. His biggest immediate challenge, of course, comes from Google, which launched its Google+ service in July and passed the 40 million user mark in October. Facebook has to keep pushing. It did a nice job with Timeline, the new profile design that finally went live last week. And with an eye toward avoiding further complaints about user privacy, Facebook also rolled out a useful tool called Activity Log which may go down as one of the site's most important additions since the inclusion of the News Feed.

The coming IPO, presumably sometime in 2012, will be a barometer of Zuckerberg's success, as well as the event of the year's tech calendar. And who knows what the future holds? Is it altogether nutso to imagine Facebook bringing out its own search technology, one that could sort through a gold mind of data about social interactions? Zuckerberg is aiming high, and Facebook is already a good part of the way there. This is how legacies get created. If it all works as Zuckerberg hopes, then maybe that $80 billion valuation will turn out to be on the low side. Scary but true.

Eric Schmidt, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin
From left, Google's Eric Schmidt, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin.(Credit: Google)

Larry Page

In Google's 2004 pre-IPO filing with the SEC, co-founder Larry Page sent prospective shareholders a Monty Python-like message that he wasn't interested in conducting business as usual.

"Google is not a conventional company. We do not intend to become one."

A bit full of himself, sure, but now that the proverbial buck stops at his desk -- he became CEO in April -- Page has had an opportunity to back up his words. Though his brief reign, this much is clear: While he may not be an unconventional CEO, Page has ably handled the awesome responsibility that he sought out. He set the company on a new course with the blockbuster announcement of a $12.5 billion deal for Motorola Mobility (a deal that gives Google more than 17,000 patents and will prove useful now that Apple is trying to nuke Android in a court case). Meanwhile, Android continues to grow by leaps -- according to Nielsen, it now powers about 40 percent of smartphones -- while Google's search dominance remains unquestioned. The company also made a successful entry into social networking with Google+, which finally offers Facebook its first serious competition for advertising dollars and user attention. Wall Street likes what it's seen. On the day Page took over, Google's shares closed at $587.68; with less than a couple of weeks left in the year, they're hovering around the $630 level.

By all accounts, Page's accession to the top job -- technically this is his second turn as CEO, though his first as the head of Google as a public company -- has been annotated by drive and energy. He wants to accelerate Google's corporate DNA, and in the near term, that may be his biggest challenge. The flip side of being big and successful is the spread of corporate sloth (as both Microsoft and IBM veterans can attest). With around 25,000 employees at Google, this is no longer a scrappy startup and it's become tougher than ever for good ideas to bubble up from the ranks and get proper consideration. That's why Page has winnowed the number of projects Google's engineers are working on, focusing their efforts on the areas where he thinks there's the best chance for the biggest returns.

OK, how difficult can it be to sit at the top of the mountain, take in your immense kingdom, and bloviate in SEC docs about being unconventional? In fairness, it's not as easy as it looks, so give Page deserving kudos for not screwing up what continues to be one of the most vibrant tech companies around. We're often reminded of the spectacular success stories registered by the likes of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs (his second time at the helm more so than his first go around) but any fair recording of CEO-founders includes no shortage of flameouts. Remember George Shaheen at Webvan.com, Philippe Kahn at Borland, and Ted Waitt at Gateway, to name a few? All were smart guys and their companies were once the toast of the town. Then the good times ended and they couldn't reverse the slide. If Page turns out to be as good as we think, Google's CEO won't ever find himself facing that sort of predicament.


THE GOATS Reed Hastings

Yesterday's hero can turn into today's goat in the amount of time it takes to launch a press release. Just ask Netflix CEO and founder Reed Hastings, who must still be wondering if it was all a nightmare.

Reed Hastings
Netflix founder Reed Hastings at one of the company's warehouses in Silicon Valley.(Credit: CBS)
 
Up until this year, Hastings was an Internet rock star, lauded for having changed the way we consume movies and television shows. Netflix was an easy-to-use service priced at the sweet spot. Consumers flocked to it. Wall Street sang its praises. But it all came a cropper in September when Hastings executed the sort of maneuver that one might have expected from F-Troop.

It wasn't just the 60 percent price hike on one of Netflix's most popular plans that got peoples' dander up. Netflix also planned to split into two parts: One unit named "Qwikster" would mail DVDs to subscribers, while the other would continue to focus on streaming movies over the Internet.

This turned out to be a public relations disaster. Even though the price increase would impact only subscribers who used both the streaming and mail-order sides of the business, the announcement left Netflix loyalists steamed. Two separate websites with two billing systems and two names? If there was a higher logic at play, it escaped most people. The reviews were uniformly lousy and Netflix became the butt of late-night TV hosts' jokes. Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter summed up the general reaction with this icy observation to a reporter from USA Today: "They raised prices. They offered lower-quality content, and they made it more complicated." Within three weeks Hastings reversed the Qwikster decision and publicly apologized for having "slipped into arrogance" (though Netflix kept the price increase in place.) But the apology was too late to repair the damage. During the third quarter, 800,000 subscribers responded to the Qwikster fiasco by dumping the service. Shares of Netflix, which earlier in the year poked above $300, have since fallen to the $70 range.

People have short memories and this isn't necessarily the end of the world for Netflix. Fans do return. Think Bob Dylan and his move to electric guitar. After the initial freak-out, most of the faithful got over it. Nothing here rules out that kind of rebound for Hastings -- as long as he avoids hitting another sour chord. At that point, Neflix really could be left blowing in the wind.


Leo Apotheker and Meg Whitman
Leo Apotheker and Meg Whitman (Credit: Graphic by James Martin/CNET)

Leo Apotheker

In our quiet moments, it's reasonable to wonder whether some mischievous warlock left the curse of the cat people on Hewlett-Packard.

Carly Fiorina's years were marked by corporate drift and tumult. Her replacement, Mark Hurd, was ousted in an expense-fudging scandal involving a former soft-porn actress. In between, there was a bizarre novella in which corporate officers trying to plug a leak ordered investigators to spy on journalists.

But nothing -- and I mean nothing -- compares with the brief and utterly feckless tenure of one Leo Apotheker, hired in November 2010 to replace Hurd.

Apotheker was a highly regarded software executive who had been chief executive of SAP AG. Although he had little experience as a hardware executive, the company hoped he could take the management skills he had picked up over the course of his long career and apply them to the job at hand. It was only much later on that we learned most members of HP's board of directors had never even met Apotheker before voting to hire him. That's what you get when the company is overseen by what a former board member has described as the "worst" board of directors in the history of business. But I digress.

After 11 months as CEO, Apotheker got the boot and HP, once one of Silicon Valley's storied company, was reduced to a laughingstock. The chronology played out over the summer, when Apotheker announced that HP would kill off the TouchPad tablet computer, which had only recently debuted. He also canceled a crop of phones and products based on Palm's WebOS operating system. He was also convinced HP would be better off selling the PC business, a $30 billion division which at the time still enjoyed big market presence.

His plan now is easy to mock. But Apotheker had a strategy to remake HP into something resembling his former company and specialize in catering to enterprise-sized companies. On the surface, at least, it was intriguing. After all, the idea of jettisoning low-margin businesses to focus on software and service worked wonders at IBM under Lou Gerstner and Sam Palmisano. But it took time for those two to get all the pieces in place and plan IBM's exit from the commodity stuff.

In contrast, the clock was ticking for Apotheker right from the start. And with HP missing its financial targets, Apotheker quickly lost credibility with the financial community, making investors even antsier as HP's stock lost 40 percent of its value. He also lost credibility with another key constituency as the board grumbled at his poor communications skills (starting with the decision to kill the TouchPad) as well as the company's product direction. Rightly or not, Apotheker was labeled a zig-zagger with little feel for HP's hardware business. The board executed a mercy killing in September, replacing Apotheker with Meg Whitman. The former eBay CEO has since announced that HP would keep the PC business.

You can't make this stuff up.


James Martin/CNET
RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis shows off the BlackBerry PlayBook.(Credit: BlackBerry PlayBook, Mike Lazaridis)
 
Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis
 
After their company's latest earnings debacle, Research In Motion's co-CEOs James Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis announced they would take just $1 in salary. Given the collapse of this one-time tech darling, some shareholders may grumble these two are still being overpaid.

It's hard to believe how quickly RIM has collapsed. The company's stock has lost more than three-quarters of its market value in the last year while a myriad of app-hip mobile handset rivals have prospered. That's all the more remarkable given how we're talking about what once was the premier mobile device maker for businesses. Now RIM is a company that can't seem to keep up. With every new Android and Apple update, RIM promises a next-generation BlackBerry phone -- sometime in the second half of next year. Meanwhile, its PlayBook tablet has been turned into a bargain-bin product with RIM offering massive discounts.

Cue up Clayton Christensen and the perils of the innovator's dilemma, where one-time market leaders fail to capitalize on new waves of innovation. In the meantime, here's Lazaridis trying to explain why the on BlackBerry 10, the upcoming product RIM has touted as the basis for its superphone, is going to be delayed:
We need a highly integrated dual-core LTE platform.The processor we selected offers industry-leading power and efficiency, and also allows us to deliver the industrial design, that we believe is critical to the success in this market segment. This chipset will not be available until mid 2012. And as a result of this and certain other factors, we now expect our first BlackBerry 10 smartphones to reach markets in the latter part of calendar 2012. In the meantime, we believe that our strong BlackBerry 7 portfolio will continue to drive adoption of BlackBerry around the world.
One problem: In July, Lazaridis told shareholders that the BlackBerry 7 handsets were just "messaging" handsets compared to the "mobile computing" handsets slated to come out with the BlackBerry 10 software. Now the company's stuck with these same "messaging" handsets while the market keeps moving along. Sanford Bernstein responded to that performance by calling management "in complete denial of the situation" while another brokerage, Robert W. Baird, said RIM's U.S. business was "in a freefall."

There's a growing feeling that Balsillie and Lazardis, who share responsibilities for leading RIM, are congenitally conventional managers ill-equipped to handle an unconventional challenge. The situation has reached the point that some are even floating suggestions that RIM may need to consider dumping the BlackBerry if it's to survive. That sounds like a stretch but at this rate the situation is impossibly grim, with investors and customers holding onto faint promises of better times ahead. The fact that RIM has even reached this point constitutes Exhibits A, B, and C for the chorus of critics demanding new leadership.


Tim Armstrong

As an early user of AOL's dial-up service, I have to confess to a twinge of nostalgia each time I watch "You've Got Mail." That's about the only warm and fuzzy feeling AOL gives off these days as CEO Tim Armstrong seeks to find on a formula that will save the company from media also-ran status.

AOL CEO Tim Armstrong.
AOL CEO Tim Armstrong.(Credit: Google)

Give the man credit for believing in a strategy. But after two years making the same pitch, the question is whether he's got the right strategy. Armstrong is an online ad sales guy -- he was Google's president of the Americas operations -- and has gone shopping for new content that AOL's ad sales team can sell against. Like Yahoo, AOL has a legacy business in the form of its dial-up operations which, remarkably, still throws off a lot of cash each quarter. That's allowed Armstrong to fund his bet that that content will create scale when he acquired the Huffington Post for $315 million as well as TechCrunch for a reported $30 million. It's still too early to say how those deals are going to work out for AOL though they were grand slams for the two blogs' creators, Arianna Huffington and Michael Arrington, who sold at the peak. The other big hope is Patch, the company's network of hyperlocal Web sites. AOL this year has sunk $40 million into Patch on top of the $75 million that it spent on the project last year. Good money after bad? Not according to Armstrong, who has predicted that Patch will start generating a profit by the end of 2011.

But despite adding a collection of works in progress, AOL has failed to distinguish itself from the pack. AOL may argue that its content Web site pickups will help boost traffic and revenues in a meaningful way but it is unclear whether traditional remedies for a traditional media company will provide the needed fix. Wall Street has not bought the story. With Armstrong scheduled to take home a total annual compensation package of $1 million, AOL's stock plummeted from nearly 25 earlier in the year to the mid-teens.

On top of that, Armstrong's reputation as a leader suffered when he was unable to effectively resolve the summer soap opera involving Arrington and Huffington. After losing a turf war, Arrington very publicly left AOL; he was soon followed out the door by several key staffers - including, most recently, TechCrunch CEO Heather Harde. But that was just a circus sideshow to the central question about whether Armstrong has what it takes to turn AOL into a money maker. Already calls are coming to split the company into pieces and jettison the units that aren't adding to growth. How long before some of those same voices begin asking why Armstrong should escape paying the same penalty exacted from Carol Bartz when she failed to revive Yahoo? After all, you can only be in turnaround mode for so long.


Charles Cooper has covered technology and business for more than 25 years. Before joining CNET News, he worked at the Associated Press, Computer & Software News, Computer Shopper, PC Week, and ZDNet. E-mail Charlie.

Newscribe : get free news in real time 

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Learning from Steve Jobs: from Garage to World Power!


Learning from Steve Jobs

Ceritalah by KARIM RASLAN

Before we can start talking about the need for innovation or speak of the need to create geniuses, we have to learn that creativity and innovation are first and foremost cultural phenomena.

STEVE Jobs is dead. Apple’s co-founder did more than anyone – and this includes his arch-rival Microsoft’s Bill Gates – to make computing manageable for everyone. Indeed, even my seventy-something mother owns a well-used iPad2.

Jobs’ brilliance lay in his ability to look at technology from the viewpoint of the user, stripping down the complexity and jargon until a machine became a tool in the hand of the user.

He asked straight forward but critical questions: what do consumers want and need? How can I meet these demands?

Instead of producing computers that flaunt their sophistication, Jobs made his devices ever more accessible and simple.

Apple products were the perfect marriage of form and function. They were sleek, intuitive and useful – objects that we enjoy touching and holding so much so that we develop a strange emotional link with them.

In order to achieve this aim, Jobs also upended the way we’ve traditionally thought of music, books and films – freeing them from their analogue formats. He discarded the old-fashioned ways of receiving entertainment and placed his products – the iPod, the iPhone and iPad at the heart of future solutions.

His success was prodigious and extraordinary. At one stage last year, Apple briefly eclipsed ExxonMobil in terms of market capitalisation.



Indeed, it’s estimated that well over 100 million iPhones and 25 million iPads have been sold to date. That the Indian government, on the day he died, rolled out its own tablet computer, called the Aakash (or “Sky”) is a greater tribute than the legions of obituaries.

The global outpouring of grief on Jobs’ death is hence a measure of the man’s reach even in death. It’s also a testament to his iconoclastic style as well as his breath-taking ability to think unconventionally.

Furthermore, Jobs executed his ideas with flamboyance and flair, disregarding the consequences as his various inspirational ideas wrought havoc with long established industries.

Standing back from the man’s achievements, it’s hard to deny that all entrepreneurs have a little bit of Steve Jobs in them.

They all possess a modicum of his verve, dynamism and, yes, madness. Wouldn’t they have become bank managers or civil servants otherwise?

However, we can’t deny the element of luck either: had Jobs died in the 90s, he would probably have been consigned to history’s footnotes, yet another businessman ousted from a company he had founded.

Also, as the son of a Syrian emigrant, Jobs was lucky he was born in America, where the opportunities to succeed were more pronounced than anywhere else.

Indeed, it’s hard to see where else a college dropout could turn a company that he started in his parent’s garage into a multinational with a market capitalisation of US$222.12bil (RM694.78bil).



This is not to say he was some kind of secular saint. His paranoia and abuse of friends and subordinates alike were well-documented. Neither was he a flag-waving patriot either.

Unlike Henry Ford, most of Apple’s products were contracted out to East Asian manufacturers, particularly China, where allegations of sweatshop labour and poor working conditions continue to haunt the tech-giant even today.

Nevertheless, no one can deny that Jobs displayed the individualism and entrepreneurial spirit that are the hallmarks of the American character.

Indeed, if we shift the discussion from Jobs to the idea of entrepreneurialism, we have to acknowledge that we are all shaped by the environment we are born into.

We can separate ourselves from the world that surrounds us on our birth.

So as we start talking about the need for “innovation” in Malaysia’s economy or speak piously of the need to “create” geniuses we have to address the national condition.

Let me ask a question then: what if Steve Jobs were born in Malaysia? Could he have reached the same dizzying heights or would he have been consigned, like so many others, to dead-end jobs.

Alternatively, would he have directed his prodigious talents to chasing after government contracts? I’m not joking.

If Malaysia is to compete in the future, we have got to learn that creativity and innovation are first and foremost cultural phenomena. These are things that you cannot pay for or legislate into existence.

Creativity cannot thrive in an environment where the balance between risk and reward is skewered. Can we truly say we’re allowing people to reach their fullest potential when our obsessions with race and religion are so dominant?

Innovation in Malaysia is hampered by our Government’s constant interventions: protecting and bailing-out businesses and individuals that ought to have gone bust ages ago.

There’s absolutely no incentive for people to think unconventionally if the most important criteria for creating wealth is your “know who” rather than “know how”.

How many Malaysian Jobs’ or Gates’ or Zuckerberg’s have we smothered because they lacked connections or were born in the “wrong” community?

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak has declared 2012 to be the “National Innovation Move­ment” year, but it won’t count for much unless we start really rewarding hard work and genius rather than mediocrity or mindless conformity.

Related Posts:

Internet Mourns Steve Jobs' Death: From garage to world power, Life and times!
Steve Jobs' Legacy To Democracy
Apple’s Iconic Steve Jobs passes on 

Friday, October 7, 2011

Steve Jobs' Legacy To Democracy


Steve Jobs' Legacy To Democracy

 

With Steve Jobs’ passing after a long battle with cancer, tributes have poured from across the globe, and countless viewpoints have been offered on what his legacy shall be.
A visionary. A designer. A perfectionist. An exacting CEO. An entrepreneur. The man who redefined the Digital Age. The man who understood what politicians didn’t.”
Even before the iPhone and the iPad, Jobs freed up graphic designers, editors, film-makers from the shackles of pre- and post-production, by adding new tools to their trade. Jobs leveled the playing field in the media industry. With the iTunes, he revolutionized multi-media, music and content-sharing. He was the drive behind many start-ups, including his own. He pushed the envelope of Internet communication, social media and networking, as no one had ever done before him.

Steve Jobs while introducing the iPad in San F...
Image via Wikipedia
 Jobs was that, and more. As President Barack Obama and Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev said, Jobs has “changed the world.”



Apple Inc. under Jobs’ leadership had another profound legacy. Its commitment to diversity. It was plain obvious when you walked into any Apple store. Diversity of gender, of race, of sexual orientation, of disability.

At Apple stores in New York and Washington, I have been helped by legally-blind Apple staff, through every step of a purchase, from selecting the product I was interested in to scanning the bar code and forwarding the invoice to my mail inbox. Once I pressed a young woman, who must have been legally-blind and was assisted by her dog, on what technology made it possible for her to perform so effectively. She answered that Apple, as a company, had always lived up to its commitment to disabled people. Whatever the technology, voice-recognition, screen-touch, disabled people were counted in at Apple, trained and assisted, to perform.

We take it for granted and, yet, I have not yet seen staff  with disability, at a sports shoe store or at an eye glasses store. It is always a thrill to walk into an Apple store, and get to talk with the “Apple geniuses.”

There is one thing, though, that Steve Jobs did not have a chance to do: to oversee the opening of an Apple Store in Africa––at least, based on Apple’s own list of its stores worldwide.

There are no Apple stores in Cairo, in Kenya or in Johannesburg. Just to be clear. That does not mean that there are no Apple products in Africa. Any visitor to any city in Africa would have had a chance to see a range of Apple devices, from iPods to iPhones to iPads and Macs, all purchased in London, New York or Dubai. The rapidly emerging consumer class in Africa, who can afford Apple products, do so with the same hype, enthusiasm and love, as any consumer in New York, Tokyo or Beijing.

In an interview on Public Radio The World, Harvard Professor Calestous Juma recounts his first encounter with an Apple computer in the mid-1980s, and how he put it to use to “set up a desktop publishing house for $5,000, down from the normal cost of $50, 000.”
Steve Jobs, Juma says, revolutionized publishing houses in Africa.”
I have often thought of how fantastic it would be to walk into an Apple store in Cairo, Cape Town, Jo’Burg or Nairobi and to get helped by an “Apple genius” from Kibera or Soweto. Think of it. How revolutionary. How democratic.

For that dream, and for all that he has, indeed, given Apple’s fans, Steve Jobs will be greatly missed.

Newscribe : get free news in real time  

Related post:

Internet Mourns Steve Jobs' Death: From garage to world power, Life and times!

Monday, September 26, 2011

How To Kick Innovation Up a Notch to Nanovation?






Martin Zwilling, Contributor;
Image via Wikipedia

What sparks paradigm-shifting innovation in any business? It’s a special mix of entrepreneur and company, regular in every respect except for having the courage and foresight to make an idea happen that was supposed to be impossible. As an entrepreneur in a startup, how do you know if you have this potential, and what are the steps to get from an innovation to a revolution?

The first step is to meditate on the examples set by others, like Steve Jobs of Apple, Jeff Bezos of Amazon, or Thomas Edison with the electric light. There are many others, like the one I just finished about Ratan Tata bringing out the Nano car in 2009 in India for less than $2,500. The book is called “Nanovation,” by Kevin & Jackie Freiberg.



These authors have studied many such examples, and summarize my own perspective on the characteristics of entrepreneurs they call “nanovators,” that produce true, life-changing innovations, which they call nanovations:
  1. Get wired for nanovation. We all agree that innovation is an adventure into the unknown. If you want people to follow, you need to be able to convince them of three things: (1) your mission is worth supporting, (2) you have the competence to build a critical mass, and (3) you have integrity to look out for their best interests along the way.
  2. Lead the revolution. Nanovators have more than the vision; they have the drive to lead, and the focus to stay on target. They are wired to win. Organizations don’t produce game-changing innovations; people do. They allow a leap of faith in their own ideas, as well as in the ideas and capabilities of their team.
  3. Build a culture of innovation. You need a culture where restlessness is tolerated, curiosity is encouraged, passion is inspired, creativity is expected, and people are always talking about what’s next. Ultimately, the mind-set changes so significantly that innovation is natural, and no one is conscious of it.
  4. Question the unquestionable. Outsiders ask a lot of questions because they don’t presume to know why something is done a certain way. Make your insiders think like outsiders. Provocative questions like “What if?”, “Why not?”, or “So what?” can help to get everyone outside the box.
  5. Look beyond customer imagination. First-of-a-kind products empower customers to do things they didn’t even know they wanted to do, and now can’t live without them. The computer mouse, Tivo, and Teflon are examples. Listen to customers, but remember that they can’t always tell you what they don’t know.
  6. Go to the intersection of trends. Nanovators pay close attention to the early warning signs that precede major cultural, societal, and market shifts. Where most people see an isolated trend, nanovators connect the dots by relating one trend to several others. They focus on next practices, versus best practices.
  7. Solve a problem that matters. The key here is to resist the temptation to pay more attention to the technology solution than the problem. Some people create brilliant solutions to non-existent problems, like maybe Segway and satellite phones. These solutions may be nice to have, but won’t ignite a revolution to get there.
  8. Risk more, fail faster, and bounce back stronger. When you pursue a creative idea that takes you beyond, fear tempts you to make compromises. If you can push through this fear and doubt, or bounce back intelligently from initial setbacks, you often arrive at something that has truly never been seen before.
Jeffrey Immelt of General Electric argues that the next big thing, like the Nano, could well be from “reverse innovation,” where instead of industrialized nations adapting their products for emerging markets, innovation in emerging markets will bring new paradigms to home markets. In any case, the future is defined by what we put off until tomorrow, so don’t wait too long to get started.

Newscribe : get free news in real time  

Thursday, September 8, 2011

Will There Be Any Jobs in the Future At All?





http://images.forbes.com/media/assets/header_baked/forbes_logo_main.gif
Alex Knapp, Contributor

“You could not step twice into the same river; for other waters are ever flowing on to you.” – Heraclitus

Douglas Rushkoff has an interesting piece at CNN.com asking whether the economy of the future will be set up in such a way that jobs as we know it make any sense at all.
Heraclitus, Detail of Rafaello Santi's

The question we have to begin to ask ourselves is not how do we employ all the people who are rendered obsolete by technology, but how can we organize a society around something other than employment? Might the spirit of enterprise we currently associate with “career” be shifted to something entirely more collaborative, purposeful, and even meaningful?

Instead, we are attempting to use the logic of a scarce marketplace to negotiate things that are actually in abundance.

In considering what an economy has to look like, Rushkoff tries to imagine past capitalism and communism into a different way of looking at economics going forward – which sort of ends up looking like the economy of the United Federation of Planets, where everyone’s basic needs are provided for but you have to do creative work to obtain status and other things you might want.



Ultimately, I’m not convinced that Rushkoff’s solution works – it suffers a little too much from what I think of as “information class myopia”, in which writers about technology, who spend most of their days involved with gadgets and electronic media while creating intellectual property for a living confuse their own experiences with universal ones. These pieces rear their heads every now and again when people ask questions like, “Why do we need a post office? I always text!” while proclaiming ubiquitous, frequently used technologies like the phone and email dead simply because they don’t use them that often as texting, Twitter, etc. Rushkoff doesn’t usually suffer from this syndrome, but I think his concept in this column does.



That said, I think Douglas Rushkoff is a pretty brilliant guy, and while I may not agree with where he’s going in this column, I do think he’s absolutely right to think about the future of our economic systems. I think he’s absolutely right to point out that now might be a good time to completely reconsider what we value in terms of work, employment, and career, and that we need to figure out what the technological and social changes of the past few decades mean for those concepts.

It’s important to remember that the economic systems that we live with today won’t last forever. As technology changes and innovation continues, so too will the very nature of what the economy is will evolve. Paradigm shifts like the rise of the corporation in the late Middle Ages, paper money, free labor and central banking, among many others, all came about as a response to particular political, social and technological pressures, needs, and problems. And as times change and different technologies and social needs come to the fore, economic institutions and rules will change accordingly – sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. Sometimes at the behest of government and sometimes whether government likes it or not.

It’s not far-fetched to imagine that the nature of employment and entrepreneurship may well be very different a century from now than it is today. Indeed, they may not even be recognizable a century from now. That’s because economic institutions and ideas aren’t natural laws – they’re practical tools that are always evolving.

Newscribe : get free news in real time 

Saturday, August 27, 2011

iQuit - Steve Jobs Resigns: Apple CEO Stepping Down






Official Press Release from Apple

CUPERTINO, California - Apple’s Board of Directors today announced that Steve Jobs has resigned as Chief Executive Officer, and the Board has named Tim Cook, previously Apple’s Chief Operating Officer, as the company’s new CEO. Jobs has been elected Chairman of the Board and Cook will join the Board, effective immediately.

“Steve’s extraordinary vision and leadership saved Apple and guided it to its position as the world’s most innovative and valuable technology company,” said Art Levinson, Chairman of Genentech, on behalf of Apple's Board. “Steve has made countless contributions to Apple’s success, and he has attracted and inspired Apple’s immensely creative employees and world class executive team. In his new role as Chairman of the Board, Steve will continue to serve Apple with his unique insights, creativity and inspiration.”

“The Board has complete confidence that Tim is the right person to be our next CEO,” added Levinson. “Tim’s 13 years of service to Apple have been marked by outstanding performance, and he has demonstrated remarkable talent and sound judgment in everything he does.”



Jobs submitted his resignation to the Board today and strongly recommended that the Board implement its succession plan and name Tim Cook as CEO.

Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and has recently introduced iPad 2 which is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices.


Letter from Steve Jobs
August 24, 2011

To the Apple Board of Directors and the Apple Community:

I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.

I hereby resign as CEO of Apple. I would like to serve, if the Board sees fit, as Chairman of the Board, director and Apple employee.

As far as my successor goes, I strongly recommend that we execute our succession plan and name Tim Cook as CEO of Apple.

I believe Apple’s brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it. And I look forward to watching and contributing to its success in a new role.

I have made some of the best friends of my life at Apple, and I thank you all for the many years of being able to work alongside you.

Who is Tim Cook?


Currently. Timothy D. Cook is Apple’s chief operating officer and reports to Apple’s CEO. Cook is responsible for all of the company’s worldwide sales and operations, including end-to-end management of Apple’s supply chain, sales activities, and service and support in all markets and countries. He also heads Apple’s Macintosh division and plays a key role in the continued development of strategic reseller and supplier relationships, ensuring flexibility in response to an increasingly demanding marketplace.

Before joining Apple, Cook was vice president of Corporate Materials for Compaq and was responsible for procuring and managing all of Compaq’s product inventory. Previous to his work at Compaq, Cook was the chief operating officer of the Reseller Division at Intelligent Electronics.

Cook also spent 12 years with IBM, most recently as director of North American Fulfillment where he led manufacturing and distribution functions for IBM’s Personal Computer Company in North and Latin America.

Cook earned an M.B.A. from Duke University, where he was a Fuqua Scholar, and a Bachelor of Science degree in Industrial Engineering from Auburn University.

Read more: http://everythinginbudget.blogspot.com/2011/08/iquit-steve-jobs-resigns-apple-ceo.html#ixzz1WCRuy0gc

Steve Jobs - The iCon says 'iQuit'

Steve Jobs has resigned in a long-expected move and named Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook as his replacement. In tribute to the 'iCon' here's a look at Jobs through the years. PHOTOS BELOW.

Steve Jobs(AP Photo)
In Pictures: Steve Jobs through the years
Click on the thumbnails BELOW to view a brief history of Steve Jobs' now legendary career. 

Apple's legendary co-founder and top ideas man Steve Jobs resigned as chief executive Wednesday, the company said, in a long expected move after he began a dramatic fight with cancer.

In a written statement, Apple, the world's second biggest company by market capitalization, announced that chief operating officer Tim Cook would take over as CEO but that Jobs would stay on as chairman of the board.

"Steve's extraordinary vision and leadership saved Apple and guided it to its position as the world's most innovative and valuable technology company," board member Art Levinson said in a statement.

No reason was given for Job's resignation, but his health problems, including a lengthy medical leave for a liver transplant in 2009 and his increasingly gaunt appearances at public events, fueled speculation he would have to give up the everyday running of the company he co-founded in 1976.

Cook ran Apple when Jobs went on medical leave and has essentially been running day-to-day operations since early this year with the company racking up record revenue and profit.

Jobs is seen as the heart and soul of Apple, with analysts and investors repeatedly expressing concern over how the Cupertino, California-based company would handle his departure.

"The board has complete confidence that Tim is the right person to be our next CEO," Levinson said.

"Tim's 13 years of service to Apple have been marked by outstanding performance, and he has demonstrated remarkable talent and sound judgment in everything he does," Levinson continued.

Jobs submitted his resignation on Wednesday and urged the board to implement its succession plan and name Cook as his replacement, according to Apple.

In Pictures: Steve Jobs through the years

Cook was previously responsible for Apple's worldwide sales and operations, including management of the supply chain, sales activities, and service and support in all markets and countries.

Jobs is a living legend in Silicon Valley. He is the beloved visionary behind the Macintosh computer, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad.

Born on February 24, 1955 in San Francisco to a single mother and adopted by a couple in nearby Mountain View at barely a week old, he grew up among the orchards that would one day become the technology hub known as Silicon Valley.

Jobs was 21 and Steve Wozniak 26 when they founded Apple Computer in the garage of Jobs's family home in 1976.

While Microsoft licensed its software to computer makers that cranked out machines priced for the masses, Apple kept its technology private and catered to people willing to pay for superior performance and design.

Under Jobs, the company introduced its first Apple computers and then the Macintosh, which became wildly popular in the 1980s.

Apple's innovations include the "computer mouse" to make it easy for users to activate programs or open files.

Jobs was elevated to idol status by ranks of Macintosh computer devotees, many of whom saw themselves as a sort of rebel alliance opposing the powerful empire Microsoft built with its ubiquitous Windows operating systems.

Jobs left Apple in 1985 after an internal power struggle and started NeXT Computer company specializing in sophisticated workstations for businesses.

He co-founded Academy-Award-winning Pixar in 1986 from a former Lucasfilm computer graphics unit that he reportedly bought from movie industry titan George Lucas for $10 million.

Apple's luster faded after Jobs left the company, but they reconciled in 1996 with Apple buying NeXT for 429 million dollars and Jobs ascending once again to the Apple throne.

Since then, Apple has gone from strength to strength as Jobs revamped the Macintosh line, revolutionizing modern culture with the introductions of the iPod, iPhone, iPad, and iTunes online shop for digital content.