STRATEGIC THINKING AND INNOVATION

Strategic Thinking and Innovation

Strategic Thinking and Innovation

Introduction

Apple, a multi-billion dollar company, was saved in 2001 by Steve Jobs. Apple Inc. has had some interesting history, but their new technologies and genius marketing skills have created a revolution in music devices that users appreciate.

History of Apple

Apple became popular in the 1980's, but Steve Jobs, one of the founders of Apple®, was fired later in 1985. Apple had a rough start but now is more than well off.

Beginning Years

Apple was founded 1976, in Cupertino, California, by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne. Steve Job s was 21, and Steve Wozniak was 25, but Ronald Wayne is considered one of the forgotten founders of Apple, because he was 41 years old but was afraid that Apple would go bankrupt so he sold his shares for $800. Before Ronald Wayne sold his share in Apple, Apple presented their Apple I to Byte Shop, Byte Shop was impressed and decided to order 50 computers, for $500 each, with only one problem, Apple only sold circuits not whole computers. Both Steve's accepted the offer and took out a loan to help develop the first Apple Macintosh (Linzmayer, 1999). Mike Markkula, another founder of Apple in 1976, put a huge financial risk into Apple, he put $92,000 into Apple, which secured a $250,000 credit at the Bank of America (Linzmayer, 1999). Markkula retired January 1997, his 20th anniversary, and while some thought he retired because Steve Jobs returned after quitting in 1985, Markkula says it was time to let others take charge (Markoff, 1997, p. 2).

Steve Jobs Starts Again

Steve Jobs quit in 1985 because he had some disputes between Sculley and other members of Apple, so the Apple board decided it was time to end Jobs job in 85' because it would help the company (Hormby, 2006). Steve Jobs has been back since 1997, and he has had many accomplishments in the past 13 years of his career. One of the first things he did when he returned was to start cutting jobs that were no longer necessary, although there weren't many, a lot of people feared being fired, and eventually they called it "getting Steved" (Cheng, 2007). Steve, between 2000 and 2001 realized that there was a new business to be explored, the mp3 player, but Apple had only made computers and some TVs, so he challenged Apple Senior Management, in February 2001, to make an mp3 player that was: portable, unique, and affordable by Christmas, which was only 10 months. So what Apple did was work on the prototype, which included a scroll wheel and a hard-drive; which they bought an entire inventory of Toshibas' smaller hard drives; and they actually made the deadline (Barrile, 2006, March). Since 1997 Steve Jobs has been able to save the company from almost failing to being a multi-billion dollar company, some of the products that have been made since Jobs return include: the iMac, iPod, Mac OS X, Apple TV, iSight, iTunes, iBooks, ...