ENTREPRENEURSHIP: A CASE STUDY OF STEVE JOBS

Steve Jobs was born on February 24, 1955 in San Francisco, California, USA. He was adopted by Paul
and Clara Jobs, who named him Steven. They were so focused on their son’s needs that they even
moved from Mountain View, California, to Los Altos, California, in 1968, to put Jobs in a new school
because he said that he could not get along with the children in his old school. (One account says that
he told his parents that he was not learning anything at his old school.) He was an odd student, out of
step with both classmates and teachers, with a mind that looked at science from unusual angles. He
preferred to spend his time with older students rather than ones his own age, including Stephen Wozniak,
an electronics genius four years older than Jobs. Jobs worked during the summers, spending one summer
in an apple orchard; he was so happy there that he later named his first legitimate business “Apple.”
Even in grade school he had shown a great aptitude for electronics, and he had been fortunate to have
an engineer for a neighbour, who answered his many questions about how electronic devices worked.
While he was in high school, he built electronic devices. Once, he wanted for his projects some rare
parts made by Hewlett-Packard; he wrote to William Hewlett, cofounder of Hewlett-Packard, and asked
for the parts to be sent to him. Hewlett responded by giving Jobs a summer job in a Hewlett-Packard
factory. Wozniak already worked there as an up-and coming engineer. In 1972 Jobs attended Reed
College, in Portland, Oregon, dropping out after one semester. He hung around the school for about a
year longer, before submitting a résumé that greatly inflated his electronics experience to Atari, a
pioneer in video gaming. For part of 1974 he worked as a game designer, helping create Breakout. After
saving up enough money to pay his way, he left Atari and journeyed with friends to India to search for
enlightenment. He shaved his head and walked through what he saw to be appalling poverty. He soon
left India believing that Thomas Edison had done more for the betterment of humanity than all the gurus
in the world. Jobs lived briefly in a farm commune and then returned to his parents’ home. In 1975 he
joined the Homebrew computer club, which included Wozniak among its members. Wozniak had
discovered that a toy in Cap’n Crunch cereal boxes made the same tones that telephone companies used
for long-distance switching. Soon, with Jobs’s help, he was making small blue boxes that could be used
with telephones to circumvent the safeguards of telephone companies and make free long-distance calls.
It was Jobs who turned this into a business venture by selling the boxes to college students. In 1976,
when Jobs was just 21, he and Wozniak started Apple Computer. The duo started in the Jobs family
garage, and funded their entrepreneurial venture by Jobs selling his Volkswagen bus and Wozniak
selling his beloved scientific calculator. Jobs and Wozniak are credited with revolutionizing the
computer industry by democratizing the technology and making the machines smaller, cheaper, intuitive
and accessible to everyday consumers. Wozniak conceived a series of user-friendly personal computers,
and with Jobs in charge of marketing— Apple initially marketed the computers for $666.66 each. The
Apple I earned the corporation around $774,000. Three years after the release of Apple’s second model,
the Apple II, the company’s sales increased by 700 percent, to $139 million. In 1980, Apple Computer
became a publicly traded company, with a market value of $1.2 billion by the end of its very first day
of trading. Jobs looked to marketing expert John Sculley of Pepsi-Cola to help fill the role of Apple’s
president.
Departure from Apple
However, the next several products from Apple suffered significant design flaws, resulting in recalls
and consumer disappointment. IBM suddenly surpassed Apple in sales, and Apple had to compete with
an IBM/PC-dominated business world. In 1984, Apple released the Macintosh, marketing the computer
as a piece of a counterculture lifestyle: romantic, youthful, creative. But despite positive sales and
performance superior to IBM’s PCs, the Macintosh was still not IBM-compatible. Sculley believed Jobs
was hurting Apple, and the company’s executives began to phase him out. Not actually having had an
official position with the company he co-founded, Jobs left Apple in 1985 to begin a new hardware and
software enterprise called NeXT, Inc. The following year Jobs purchased an animation company from
George Lucas, which later became Pixar Animation Studios. Believing in Pixar’s potential, Jobs initially
invested $50 million of his own money in the company. Pixar Studios went on to produce wildly popular
animation films such as Toy Story, Finding Nemo and The Incredibles. Pixar’s films have netted $4
billion. The studio merged with Walt Disney in 2006, making Steve Jobs Disney’s largest shareholder.
Reinventing Apple
Despite Pixar’s success, NeXT, Inc. floundered in its attempts to sell its specialized operating system
to mainstream America. Apple eventually bought the company in 1996 for $429 million. The following
year, Jobs returned to his post as Apple’s CEO. Just as Steve Jobs instigated Apple’s success in the
1970s, he is credited with revitalizing the company in the 1990s. With a new management team, altered
stock options and a self-imposed annual salary of $1 a year, Jobs put Apple back on track. His ingenious
products such as the iMac, effective branding campaigns and stylish designs caught the attention of
consumers once again.
Pancreatic Cancer
In 2003, Jobs discovered that he had a neuroendocrine tumour, a rare but operable form of pancreatic
cancer. Instead of immediately opting for surgery, Jobs chose to alter his Pesco vegetarian diet while
weighing Eastern treatment options. For nine months, Jobs postponed surgery, making Apple’s board
of directors nervous. Executives feared that shareholders would pull their stock if word got out that their
CEO was ill. But in the end, Jobs’ confidentiality took precedence over shareholder disclosure. In 2004,
he had a successful surgery to remove the pancreatic tumour. True to form, in subsequent years Jobs
disclosed little about his health.
Later Innovations
Apple introduced such revolutionary products as the Macbook Air, iPod and iPhone, all of which have
dictated the evolution of modern technology. Almost immediately after Apple releases a new product,
competitors scramble to produce comparable technologies. Apple’s quarterly reports improved
significantly in 2007: Stocks were worth $199.99 a share – a record-breaking number at that time – and
the company boasted a staggering $1.58 billion profit, an $18 billion surplus in the bank and zero debt.
In 2008, iTunes became the second-biggest music retailer in America—second only to Wal-Mart. Half
of Apple’s current revenue comes from iTunes and iPod sales, with 200 million iPods sold and 6 billion
songs downloaded. For these reasons, Apple has been ranked No. 1 on Fortune magazine’s list of
“America’s Most Admired Companies,” as well as No. 1 among Fortune 500 companies for returns to
shareholders.

Questions:
(a) Make a list of Traits of an Entrepreneur and show as to how many traits were present in Steve Jobs.
(b) Identify the limitations of Steve Jobs.
(c) What are the lessons that you have learned from Steve Jobs?