‘Harvard Business’: Steve Jobs represents both the best and worst of the ‘face of business’

Posted by Dennis Sellers Jun 30, 2009 at 6:03am

In his blog at Harvard Business, Bill Taylor—a writer, speaker and entrepreneur—says that Apple CEO Steve Jobs is a visionary but also, in some ways, represents “the face of business at its worst.”

“There’s no doubt that the Apple CEO will go down as one of the most creative, visionary, and high-impact leaders of his generation—or any generation,” he says. “How many corporate executives can make a legitimate claim to have reshaped not just one industry but four: computing (the Mac), music (the iPod), mobile communications (the iPhone), and movies (Pixar). And how many CEOs can make the legitimate claim that they achieved their wealth and power by making tens of millions of people so unbelievably happy that they worship the company and its products with near-religious devotion? So In terms of the impact his products have had on the world, Steve Jobs represents the face of business at its best.”

So what has Jobs done wrong? “Jobs, for all of his virtues, clings to the Great Man Theory of Leadership—a CEO-centric model of executive power that is outmoded, unsustainable, and, for most of us mere mortals, ineffective in a world of non-stop change,” Tayloro says. ”... The best leaders I know don’t want the job of thinking for everybody else. They understand that if they can tap the hidden genius inside the organization, and the collective genius outside the organization, they will create ideas that will be much more powerful than what even the smartest individual leader could ever come up with on his or her own. Nobody alone is as smart as everybody together.

If you like what you see at Macsimum News, if you read Macsimum regularly, if we cover your products/services, feel free to leave us a tip at the MACSIMUM TIP JAR.

Advanced Search

Article Information

Comment on this Article Print this Article Email this Article Digg This

Contributor

Recent Articles