The ‘i’ Factor
The company once falling down in the dearth of financial crunch happens to be the most rapidly growing one today!! Could a single product bring this change, could a single thought bring this big a change, or is it the single word- “i” which brought the change!!
Not long ago from now, Apple’s revenue were in shallow waters as the company could not compete the fast developing market. At that time, the original Apple founder, Steve Jobs was leading another firm- NeXT which was also a result of his sheer hard work and innovation. Jobs joined back Apple in 1996 as an intern CEO when Apple bought NeXT Computers. Apple was then facing difficulties in development of the new Mac OS X. Jobs was appointed as advisor to Apple as an agreement between Apple and NeXT merger. When the state of conditions of Apple didn’t improve, Jobs took over the control and was named as the ‘interim-CEO’ or the ‘CEO’ as he jokingly referred to it. By 1998, Apple was out of bankruptcy and doing well under his control. No wonder he had the vision fixed in his head – to bring a revolutionary change to the TV, Phone and Music industry. In 1998, Apple released iMac which was fascinating, in 2000- the first generation iPod, in 2007- the first iPhone and the iPad in 2010.
“Failures are the stepping stones to success”. Jobs’ life was a personification to this thought. A university dropout by choice, he learnt calligraphy which he instilled in the different fonts of the Macintosh. While he founded Apple, he was ousted by someone whom he himself got into the company in 1985. This was a turning point in his life, as he says too. “I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple”. He travelled to India in 1974 in search of spiritual enlightenment. But the person he came looking for- Neem Karoli Baba had died the previous year and Jobs left back to US after 7 months traveling across India.
Follow this author to continue reading more about both – the company and the person himself. For now hope you like this small, quick post which I write while in a cruise to Helsinki from Stockholm.
