Leaders of the most successful companies know that innovations are crucial in order to drive their business and company’s growth in the dynamic and competitive environment. These passionate and creative Heads are not afraid to meet new challenges and to push the boundaries of human creativity. They are armed with original ideas¸ talented workforce and best customers and they are able to identify new opportunities to come out with amazing products. For them¸ the innovation process is not only about creating a new product¸ but also about creating a unique product that makes their company stand out from the competition. According to BusinessWeek¸ “innovation today is much more than new products. Innovation is selecting and executing the right ideas and bringing them to market in record time.
Currently¸ the entire world is remembering Apple’s visionary¸ creative genius and CEO Steve Jobs¸ who transformed Apple into a real innovation factory. Even though he dropped out of Red College and outlived ups and downs¸ he was never afraid to fail. He always drove the business with passion and charisma.
Apple was founded in 1976 by the pair of high school friends Steve Jobs together with Steve Wozniak¸ who began building computers in a bedroom of Steve’s house. In 1985¸ Mr. Jobs left Apple to form NeXT¸ an American computer company that developed and manufactured a series of computer workstations. NeXt was purchased on the 20th of December 1996 for $429 million and 1.5 million shares of Apple stock. [1] In the same year¸ Steve Jobs rejoined Apple and in 1997 he returned to the function of CEO. During this time¸ the company was close to bankruptcy after losing more than $1.8-billion. Although the company created numerous products during the period of Steve Job’s absence¸ there was no focus on structure of developed products. After his comeback he reduced the number of products to just 10 with the aim of improving launched products and developing new products faster. “People think focus means saying yes to the thing you have got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully¸” enounced Jobs in a 2004 BusinessWeek interview.
Under his visionary and captivating leadership¸ Apple’s revenue increased more than 1.200 % and net profit more than 3.000 % in less than 11 years. Market cap gained more than thirty five times over $ 300 billion. On 9th of August 2011¸ Apple became the United State’s largest company.
Apple can pride itself of having over 200 million registered accounts with credit cards worldwide and over 100 million downloaded eBooks. In Apple’s strong product line¸ there are milestones such as iPhone¸ iPad or iPod¸ which have contributed to the company’s breakthrough success. But it was not Mr Jobs who invented the first MP3 Player or the first smart phone¸ but it was his iPod and iPhone that drove the sales to never-before-seen sales and that radically reinvented music and telecom industry. It was also him who created the word’s No.1 Music store iTunes or the movie industry with Pixar and drove the well-known campaign Think