Steve Jobs: Redefining The CEO

conq writes "BusinessWeek has a nice piece on how Steve Jobs is redefining the job of being a CEO. From the story: 'Just over a decade ago, Steve Jobs was considered washed-up, a has-been whose singular achievement was co-founding Apple Computer back in the 1970s. Now, given the astounding success of Apple and Pixar, he's setting a new bar for how to manage a Digital Age corporation.'"

Comments

yes it is

[0x1234]

Sometimes more words are just more words. It's the whole point of Blaise Pascal's famous quotable:

I have made this longer, because I have not had the time to make it shorter.

There are alot interesting things in the slide show associated with this piece. For example:

"Jobs has believed that small teams of top talent will outperform better-funded big ones."

I think this is a very important lesson that few CEOs of big companies understand. It's why companies like Scaled Composites (Burt Rutan's Company) can accomplish so much with so little.

Re:Fundamentally the same strategy as before

[Logic Bomb]

You've totally missed the parent post's point. It's not unique that Apple has total control of the platform. It's unique that the CEO does. Jobs is not just being a business manager, giving general guidance to the product development groups. He's directly involved in choosing specifications, features, and even physical designs. If you can believe even a third of what's published about him in mainstream sources, he makes decisions about things which could be considered very small details. For example, when the G4-based flat-panel iMacs were designed, he insisted that a white sticker be placed over the manufacturer's label on the hard drives. Why? Because if you look down through the holes on top where the fan is, without the sticker the view wouldn't be "clean" enough.

You think Michael Eisner sat down with the script to, say, "Pocohontas" and made corrections?