Steve Jobs R.I.P
Very sad to learn of Steve Jobs’ untimely death. Michael Rose’s excellent obituary captures some of the magnitude of what we’ve lost: “The world is poorer for the lack of another twenty years of Steve Jobs’s brain, his energy, his judgement, his almost uncanny power to force reality to conform to his expectations rather than the other way around.”
When we started Jacaranda with Anita Roddick in the late 80′s, we automatically adopted The Body Shop’s computer and IT systems. At the time they were apparently the UK’s biggest corporate user of Macs – so, by accident, we grew up with Apple – and it took us years to realise how lucky we’d been.
One of Steve Jobs’ defining characteristics seems to have been a total disregard for market research, preferring instead to rely on an unshakeable belief in his own judgement of what his customers wanted – a judgement that was right much more often than his critics always hoped.
Such unswerving self-belief was a characteristic that Anita shared and which helped to make her business, in a much smaller way, hugely sucessful. (‘Market research is like driving while looking in the rear-view mirror’). It was also a trait that lead to both being adored by many and vehemently disliked by a few.
Other than both being self-confessed ex-hippies, the other thing that they both share is having both died too early to really enjoy their success. It’s been said by her family that Anita’s greatest regret would have been not living long enough to give away all the money she had made. From what little I know of Steve Jobs and his (much less well-publicised) philanthropy I guess the same may be true of him.
For anyone who hasn’t seen it, this video of his address to Stamford University students some years ago is brilliant and made all the more poignant by today’s news.
