Reading Reflection No. 1

Week 7 Reading Reflection

You read about an entrepreneur: Steve Jobs

·    

         What surprised you the most? What surprised me the most about Jobs was is life prior to becoming the CEO of Apple. Steve like many people of that era were very experimental and open-minded. In the chapter titled “Atari and India, Zen and the Art of Game Design” it talks about how Jobs did a sole searching trip to India. That was was surprising.

·      What about the entrepreneur did you most admire? What I admire most from Jobs is his desire to succeed and create new innovations. Although Jobs has gotten negative feedback on the way he acted as CEO, I think all that was essential for Apple to thrive ass much as it did even when the company was about to be destroyed.

·      What about the entrepreneur did you least admire? I think the least thing I liked about Jobs was his attitude when it comes to his employees. Steve was very demanding and exceeded highly of this employees in a timely manner. Also I don’t like the fact that Steve Jobs gets all the credit for Apple when Steve Wozniak was essential if not the most important figure in the development stage of Apple.

·      Did the entrepreneur encounter adversity and failure? If so, what did they do about it?  Steve Jobs definitely did face adversity and failure. I think the biggest failure he faced was when the Board of Trustees voted to kick Jobs out of Apple. That’s crazy to think that the man who started this company was being kicked from it. Apple’s new management seemed to be more of a failure than before. Steve went on to start a new computer company called NeXT and also launching Pixar Animation Studios. Apple realized that they needed Jobs as the CEO, so they acquired NeXT and untimely Jobs went on to become the CEO again and led the way to new innovations such as the iPod, iPad, and off course the iPhone.

2) What competencies did you notice that the entrepreneur exhibited?

Steve was a major perfectionist. He valued quality over quantity like his other competitors. His products had to be aesthetically pleasing and able to wow customers with its perfect features. Also Steve was a visionary. He was able to see the future in a way that he could perfectly guide himself and his company to success, that is truly amazing

3) Identify at least one part of the reading that was confusing to you.

“Coming back to America was, for me, much more of a cultural shock than going to India. The people in the Indian countryside don’t use their intellect like we do, they use their intuition instead, and their intuition is far more developed than in the rest of the world. Intuition is a very powerful thing, more powerful than intellect, in my opinion. That’s had a big impact on my work. Western rational thought is not an innate human characteristic; it is learned and is the great achievement of Western civilization. In the villages of India, they never learned it. They learned something else, which is in some ways just as valuable but in other ways is not. That’s the power of intuition and experiential wisdom.”

4) If you were able to ask two questions to the entrepreneur, what would you ask? Why? 

The two questions I would ask is:

1.     What would you suggest (as a formula for success) that I should do so that someday I can be the next big thing? The reason why I ask this is because I can be discouraged a lot of times and even lose hope of the bigger picture. I would like to hear the input of Jobs on what I should do to avoid these situations or get over these situations.

2.      How should the relationship between you and Steve Wozniak be? Jobs as the marketing person and entrepreneur and Wozniak as the engineer. The reason why I ask this is because I think it is essential to know how this relationship between the engineer and entrepreneur should be to ensure success of a company.

5) For fun: what do you think the entrepreneur's opinion was of hard work? Do you share that opinion?  

I believe Jobs opinion of hard work would be to never settle. By this I mean that even in times of hardships and ridicule the only thing stopping you from succeeding is yourself. A person must be willing to never settle and always strive to success. I share this opinion as I’ve seen it with my mom. Her desire to see her children make something of themselves outweighs any hardship she has endured.