Steve Jobs: Innovator Extraordinaire

As we all know, Steve Jobs was the co-founder of one of the biggest tech companies in the world, Apple Inc. However, what not a lot of people know is before reaching the top of the mountain, Jobs had to go through many different challenges in his life. Some people may feel bad that he had to experience that, but in my opinion, it was going through those trials that helped him become the person we know today. Those contributed greatly to how he is as an innovator, an entrepreneur, and most importantly, as a person.

Early Life

Steve Paul Jobs was born on February 24, 1955, in San Francisco, California. One of the first major challenges he encountered was upon being born; his biological parents immediately put him up for adoption.

As a child, Steve had a rough early school life. He felt constrained by the traditional classroom setting, often feeling that his growth was being stunted. He eventually adapted and grew a strong fondness for electronics. In high school, he showed exemplary level of potential. He was even invited to take part in a summer internship at Hewlett-Packard (HP), where met his eventual business partner, Steve Wozniak.

Today, Apple is one of the largest companies in world and manufacturer of arguably the most popular smartphone. Even after his death in 2011, Steve Jobs left an important legacy, not only with his company but also how we should live our lives.

What We Can Learn

The life of Steve Jobs can teach us two important things.

First of all, we need to have a vision of what we want to become. Everything begins with this. Not only will this determine your direction in life, but also serve as your motivation to strive harder. A vision should not only be for yourself or what you want to become, but it should be about how you want to world to be, and how you want to change the world. Let your dream be bigger than yourself.

I believe that when Steve Jobs envisioned Apple, he not only wanted to make money but to create something that would improve how to do things. His consistent innovation proved that he was never contented with what he created, and always strives to do more.

Secondly, his life teaches us that no matter what the challenge, we can always find a way to overcome it. When we are in the middle of problems, we sometimes feel our extreme helplessness. Often time, we feel that nothing we do can solve our dilemma. However, we can’t allow hopelessness to beat us. Just like Jobs, we should find a way to succeed. If one door closes, we need to find another door, even if it’s a back door, just to get us in and become one step closer to our vision. Life is unfair, but it won’t ever give us anything we can’t handle.

For me, this is what it takes to become an innovator: vision and fortitude. Both these values go hand-in-hand with each other. In the same way that no plan ever succeeded without a clear vision, no person has ever achieved his or her dream without fortitude and inner strength. Steve Jobs showed us the importance of these, and his story inspires us to follow in his footsteps as an innovator extraordinaire.


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