Think Differently: Steve Jobs

When thinking on who to start my blog with, the answer was instantaneous. A man I grew up idolizing and unfortunately never got a chance to meet. The man altered the course of history through his big C creativity, allowing others to do little c creativity. That man is Steven Paul Jobs.

Jobs was one of two members to found Apple, an upstart computer company that took the world by storm in the 1970s and 80s. His computers were often out of budget for money of the working class people of that day who wanted to own their own computer, they often opted for Microsoft Windows platform which was significantly cheaper but did not have all the bells and whistles of Apple. The breakthrough came in 1984 with the debut of the original Apple Macintosh. This was a lower cost computer that had all the bells and whistles and gave Apple the edge in the cold war of computers at the time.

However, the part of Jobs' career I want to focus on is not so well known. Just a year after Apple Macintosh was released, Steve Jobs resigned from Apple, the company he helped build. He left with his $7 million net worth and found a new computer company called NeXT Inc. This computer company focused more on the interface and creative portion of the systems itself. After nearly going bankrupt with its first computer, Steve shifted towards solely developing software, which was later used to create the World Wide Web. In fact the company did so well that by 1996, NeXT was acquired by Apple, bringing Steve Jobs full circle back to the company that he helped create. This is a clear cut case of divergent thinking. He took something that was already in circulation, the original Apple Macintosh, improved upon the design that he built himself and solve the problem of expensive software. He again used this divergent thinking when he founded Pixar in 1986, utilizing NeXT Technology and systems in this digital design studio. Pixar as we know, it was acquired by Disney for $7.4 billion, and is the driving force behind so many of our childhood stories.

In closing, Steve Jobs used both types of creativity to his advantage, along with drastic divergent thinking which cemented his place as an icon for the history of time.