Lessons from Steve Jobs, Founder of Apple Computers Executive Summary by Vadim Kotelnikov Steve Jobs is one of the

most successful entrepreneurs of our generation. His success story is legendary. Put up for adoption at an early age, dropped out of college after 6 months, slept on friends floors, returned coke bottles for 5 cent deposits to buy food, then went on to start Apple Computers and Pixar Animation Studios. Do what you love to do. Find your true passion. Do what you love to do a make a difference! The only way to do great work is to love what you do. The Power of Passion
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Be different . Think different. "Better be a pirate than to join the navy."

Do your best. Do your best at every job. No sleep! Success

generates more success. So be hungry for it. Hire good people with passion for excellence. Make SWOT analysis. As soon as you join/start a company, make a list of strengths and weaknesses of yourself and your company on a piece of paper. Don't hesitate in throwing bad apples out of the company.
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Be entrepreneurial . Look for the next big thing. Find a set of ideas that need to be quickly and decisively acted upon and jump through that window. Sometimes the first step is the hardest one. Just take it! Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. Entrepreneurial Leader: 4 Specific Attributes
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Start small, think big. Don't worry about too many things at once. Take a handful of simple things to begin with, and then progress to more complex ones. Think about not just tomorrow, but the future. "I want to put a ding in the universe, reveal Steve Jobs his dream.
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Strive to become a market leader. Own and control the primary technology in everything you do. If there's a better
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technology available, use it no matter if anyone else is not using it. Be the first, and make it an industry standard. 3 Strategies of Market Leaders Focus on the outcome . People judge you by your performance, so focus on the outcome. Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected. Advertise. If they don't know it, they won't buy your product. Pay attention to design. "We made the buttons on the screen look so good you'll want to lick them." "Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works."
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Ask for feedback. Ask for feedback from people with diverse backgrounds. Each one will tell you one useful thing. If you're at the top of the chain, sometimes people won't give you honest feedback because they're afraid. In this case, disguise yourself, or get feedback from other sources. Focus on those who will use your product listen to your customers first.
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Innovate . Innovation distinguishes a leader from a follower. Delegate, let other top executives do
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50% of your routine work to be able to spend 50% your time on the new stuff. Say no to 1,000 things to make sure you don't get on the wrong track or try to do too much. Concentrate on really important creations and radical innovation. Hire people who want to make the best things in the world. You need a very product-oriented culture, even in a technology company. Lots of companies have tons of great engineers and smart people. But ultimately, there needs to be some gravitational force that pulls it all together. Learn from failures . Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations. The Jazz of Innovation: 11 Practice Tips
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Learn continually . There's always "one more thing" to learn! Cross-pollinate ideas with others both within and outside your company. Learn from customers, competitors and partners. If you partner with someone whom you don't like, learn to like them praise them and benefit from them. Learn to criticize your enemies openly, but honestly.
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Why Should You Strive To Become a Market Leader? Excerpts from The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, Al Ries, Jack Trout and Paul Temporal It's better to be the first than it is to be better. Blue Ocean vs. Red Ocean Strategy Being first in any category is going to give you the edge being the leader comes from being first. It's much easier to get into the mind of consumers first than try to convince people you have a better product or service than the one that did get there first. Improvements are always made to product/service inventions and innovations but the first in has a head start. Once you are the leader, a position mostly gained by being first, it is pretty hard for competitors to dislodge you, as long as you keep your products up to date and of comparable quality. Further, the first in to the market has the opportunity to have its brand name adopted as the generic category name. Once you are first and get the consumers to buy your brand, often they won't bother to switch. People tend to stick with what they've got.

Competitive Strategies: 2 Types What It Takes To Become a Market Leader? The market leader is dominant in its industry and has substantial market share. If you want to lead the market, you must be the industry leader in establishing an innovation-friendly organization, developing new business models and new products or services. You must be on the cutting edge of new technologies and innovative business processes. Your customer value proposition must offer a superior solution to a customers' problem, and your product must be well differentiated. 8 Best Practices of Successful Companies Steve Jobs' 12 Rules of Success 7. Strive to become a market leader. Own and control the primary technology in everything you do. If there's a better technology available, use it no matter if anyone else is not using it. Be the first, and make it an industry standard.... More Case in Point GE: Lessons from Jack Welch "When you're number four or five in a market, when number one sneezes, you get pneumonia. When you're number one, you control your destiny. The number fours keep merging; they have difficult times. That's not the same if you're number four, and that's your only businesses. Then you have to find strategic ways to get stronger," says Jack Welch, the legendary former CEO of GE. 25 Lessons from Jack Welch "Evolve a game plan, a business strategy "number one, number two," advises Jack Welch. Build on what the company does best. Have a Unique Selling Proposition based on giving customers value that competitors cannot equal or surpass. Become more concrete, more focused. In business, the strong survive, the weak do not. The big, fast ones get to play, the small, slow ones are left behind. There is a competitive advantage of

being the best or the second best that can, and should, be exploited. Winners and market leaders will be those who insist upon being the number one or number two fastest, leanest, lowercost, world-wide producers of quality goods or services and those who have a clear technological edge or a clear competitive advantage in their chosen niche. 3Ss of Winning in Business Set Stretch Goals 4 Entrepreneurial Strategies By: Peter Drucker Being "the Fastest and the Mostest" the "greatest gamble", aiming from the beginning at permanent leadership... More Entrepreneurial Leader: 4 Specific Attributes Blue Ocean Strategy: 6 Principles Blue ocean strategy is about revolutionary value innovation. The six principles drive the successful formulation and execution of Blue Ocean Strategy. These principles attenuate the six risks... More Creating Sustainable Profit Growth: 9 Questions Case in Point 7-Part Competitive Strategy of Microsoft Although Bill Gates, Founder of Microsoft, built his empire on technological products, his business mastery is even more important than his technical skills, and his competitive urge is a huge driving force. The early success of Microsoft was founded on the company's 7-part competitive strategy... More Venture Strategies The most successful companies are those that have developed aggressive venture strategies and have made ventures critical components of their strategic and operating

success. In ventures, large and midsized companies can discover a source of growth they are striving to achieve. New business creation has become central to achieving strategic and financial objectives of market champions... More Case in Point Toshiba Toshibas approach is to develop strategic alliances with different partners for different technologies because a single company cannot dominate any technology or business by itself... More Fast Company In the new economy where everything is moving faster and it's only going to get faster, the new mantra is, "Do it more with less and do it faster".3... More Best Practices Google: 10 Golden Rules Encourage Creativity. Google engineers can spend up to 20 percent of their time on a project of their choice. There is, of course, an approval process and some oversight, but basically we want to allow creative people to be creative. One of our not-so-secret weapons is our ideas mailing list: a companywide suggestion box where people can post ideas ranging from parking procedures to the next killer app. The software allows for everyone to comment on and rate ideas, permitting the best ideas to percolate to the top... More New Business Models Traditional corporations, using old business models, are overstructured, overcontrolled, and overmanaged, but underled. Top managers should rather concentrate on that handful of real managerial leadership tasks that will bring success in the future. Thus, a new business model is emerging, a model where "most of key missions of the organization are distributed to the myriad individual pieces and unity comes from the vigor of people and

the free flow of knowledge, not a burdensome central headquarters."4... More New Business Models Building Your Sustainable Competitive Advantage Sustainable competitive advantage is the prolonged benefit of implementing some unique value-creating strategy based on unique combination of internal organizational resources and capabilities that cannot be replicated by competitors. Sustainable competitive advantage allows the maintenance and improvement of your enterprise's competitive position in the market. It is an advantage that enables your business to survive against its competition over a long period of time... More Discover much more in the FULL VERSION of e-Coach Four Types of Market Dominance Strategies... Three Generic Business and Marketing Strategies... Differentiation Strategy... Strategic Intent... Fast Company... Owning Your Sustainable Competitive Advantage... Fast Decision Making... Eliminating Bureaucracy... Relentless Growth Attitude... Driving Growth Through Innovation... Idea Management... Radical Innovation... Leading Innovation...

Value Innovation... Strategy Innovation... New-to-the-World Product Development... Process Innovation... Technology Innovation... Flat Organization... The Fun Factor... Marketing Innovation... The Power of Taking a Different View... Entrepreneurial Action... Managing Innovation by Cross-functional Teams... Case in Point IDEO... Case in Point AT&T: Developing New Credit Card Service... Case in Point Silicon Valley Companies... Case in Point British Petroleum... Case in Point Quantum... Case in Point Charles Schwab... Case in Point GE... Case in Point Dell...