|
 | Thinking for themseves...not of their competition
|
Steve Jobs has resigned his CEO position at Apple after taking a company he helped found from the brink of extinction to being one of the most innovative and successful electronic companies in history.
An old quote from Jonathan Ive, chief designer at Apple:
Apple declined requests for an interview with Ive. But during a 1999 interview with The Associated Press, Ive said that for years, designers would produce foam models of computers only to be sent back to their drawing boards because of managers' fixations with focus groups and marketing figures.
"We lost our identity and looked to competition for leadership," Ive said at the time.
Brunner left in 1996 and suggested that Ive take over the post, even though Ive was only 29. When Jobs returned from his exile and became interim CEO in 1997, he named Ive as senior vice president of industrial design.
Unlike previous product attempts, the iMac concept was immediately embraced by the top decision makers at Apple, and the design went through very few revisions.
"We knew we had it when we saw it, and with Jobs' support we were able to make it happen," Ive said in 1999.
At a time when most computers were boxy and largely black, beige or gray, the iMac was bulbous and flashy. People snapped up 150,000 of them in the first weekend following its release. Apple sold 800,000 iMacs by the end of the year.
The iMac changed the way consumers thought about personal computers and about Apple itself. It gave Apple a vital boost that helped it usher in a new era of consumer electronics that were quirky, fun and colorful. The marketing team even teased consumers by encouraging them at one point to collect all five - strawberry, blueberry, grape, tangerine and lime.
I can comfortably say the rest is history- iMac, Mac Mini iPod, iTunes, iPhone, IPod Touch, Air Book, Apple Stores, Apple TV, iPad, iCloud,and soon to be consumer FPD's.
I suggest that we take a lesson from Apple and focus on our respective businesses and always put our customers first and provide superior experiences. Our success will follow.
| 
