What Would Steve Jobs Do? How the Steve Jobs Way Can Inspire Anyone to Think Differently and Win by Peter Sander Read Free Book Online

Steve got very involved in the design and function of these stores, being particular about every element from floor to ceiling (literally).
    Products were grouped by function, which at the time was the four-quadrant grid that Jobs had laid out upon his 1997 return: Desktop or Portable, Consumer or Professional. When the first Apple Stores opened in May 2001, the iPod wasn’t even out yet, so the Apple Store had only the computer lines, most eye-catchingly the colorful iMac, to display.
    A nice touch came in the form of the “Genius Bar,” the concierge-style desk at the back of the store patterned after a similar feature found in the luxury chain Four Seasons hotel lobbies. Another nice touch was dispensing with the traditional cash registers and checkout lines found in most retail stores in favor of portable wireless devices carried by floor personnel. These personnel could deliver a personal shopping and consultation experiencethroughout the entire store visit. The obvious point was to give customers a complete and holistic pre-sale and postsale product experience.
    To make a longer story short, no other computer experience has even come close to the success of the Apple Store. The 357 stores open worldwide (as of July 2011) have become hubs of activity and destination locations in many shopping malls around the country. They have required crowd-control measures when new products, such as the iPad, were introduced. The resulting expansion of the Apple brand and customers’ willingness to pay a higher price has produced incalculable value for Apple Inc.
    The Apple Stores are a pure example of Steve’s innovative spirit and his vision and passion for the customer experience. They represent a pure example of his leadership style.
“U NFORTUNATELY , T HAT D AY H AS C OME …”
     
    Steve Jobs passed away peacefully on October 5, 2011, of respiratory failure related to the spread of pancreatic cancer.
    Just prior to that, on August 24, 2011, Steve had announced his resignation as CEO, although he stayed on as board chairman. In his words: “Unfortunately, thatday has come where I can no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO.”
    Steve Jobs’s declining health and the events leading up to his resignation and passing are widely known and documented. In mid-2004, he announced that he had been diagnosed with a rare but unusually treatable form of pancreatic cancer, and after undergoing alternative diet-based treatments for nine months, underwent a complex tumor-removal operation known as the Whipple procedure in July 2004.
    The initial results were positive, and although he lost some weight and had a gaunt appearance at times, he delivered the famous 2005 Stanford commencement address in style and hung in as an active CEO for the next three years, giving the various keynote addresses and other presentations he had become so well known for. Speculation about his health continued through the end of 2008, when Steve announced that the January 2009 Macworld keynote address would be delivered by marketing VP Phil Schiller.
    During that January, Steve disclosed that “[his] health issues were more complex than [he] originally thought.” He took a six-month medical leave, during which he underwent a liver transplant. He returned from the leave with an excellent health prognosis, and while the speculation continued, he carried out his normal duties as Apple CEO.
    In January 2011, he announced another medical leave without giving specific reasons. Despite this, he returned to launch the iPad 2 and give the keynote at the Worldwide Developer’s Conference. He even gave a short talk and did a question-and-answer session with the Cupertino City Council in June 2011 to review plans for an enormous new headquarters facility (called a “spaceship” because of its circular form) to be built on property acquired from Hewlett-Packard in Cupertino, where that company had operated one of its largest sites. He looked