Ask any group of management or business students to name leaders they admire and they usually cite Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and Steve Jobs. These are all leaders whose life work has changed the world. Gandhi and Mandela operated in the arena of politics – but their compassion and humanity went beyond this sphere and changed the way in which their countries achieved nationhood peacefully for the better. Steve Jobs operated in a completely different sphere. His was the world of business, of turning ideas into products that changed the way the world's mass market operated. Steve Jobs died at the age of 56 on 5 October, 2011. Obituary writers compared his contribution to the modern consumer world as being possibly greater than that of Henry T Ford, Thomas Edison, Graham Alexander Bell, Marconi or Logi Baird – inventors who between them gave us the motor car, electricity, telephone, radio and television.  As a visionary whose work spanned the field of information, entertainment, personal and business life,

Jobs' career intersected with the realms pioneered by many great entrepreneurs before him.

Steven Paul Jobs was born to Joanne Carole Schieble and Abdulfattah John Jandali. His mother came from the small town of Green Bay, Wisconsin while his father was a first generation immigrant to the United States from Syria, Middle East. Steve's parents were unable to look after him, so his mother gave him up for adoption to a Californian couple called Clara and Paul Jobs. Clara and Paul called their adopted son Steve and took him to live with them in their home in the Santa Clara Valley, south of San Francisco. At that time, the Santa Clara Valley (also known as "Silicon Valley") pretty much embodied the American dream. It was a mix of small town communities with agriculture, hands-on manufacturing and can-do thinking.

Jobs grew up in a community that was both confident about the future and appreciative of individual talent and hard work. His adoptive father encouraged him to work alongside him in his workshop. He showed Jobs how to take mechanical engines apart to identify a problem or failure and to then put them back together again. One of the few stories about Jobs from this time tells how, as a 13-year-old, he was building a frequency counter when he discovered that he was missing a crucial part. Unable to find the part in any local store, the boy called up William Hewlett, a co-founder of the mighty company Hewlett-Packard, to ask for his help in tracking down the essential part. The story says that Hewlett spent 20 minutes on the phone with the young Jobs and then personally prepared a box of parts to be sent to him. He also invited him to work as a summer intern in the company. So it was here that Jobs started his career in the world of IT, informatics and hardware operators.

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Glossary

Obituary (n) – a write-up about someone who has died.
Visionary (n) – a person who has clear ideas about what the future should be like.