Steve Jobs: The Man who Thought Different: Book Analysis 
The paper's essential concern is the report on one of the most famous Steve Jobs' biographical books, which is named as Steve Jobs: The Man who Thought Different, written by Blumenthal. The paper touches upon the essential strong points the book's author implemented into the masterpiece which is dedicated to a masterpiece creator, Steve Jobs. In addition to this, there is an analytical approach to the information that was inserted into the book. The paper states that Steve Jobs – regardless of the fact that he had a difficult character – serves as an incredible example of a person who is characterized as a perfectionist and a revolutionist. This is an unarguable fact that the Job's personality and talent have changed the world forever to positive. Having developed the numerous gadgets, Jobs showed how the company is to be governed in order to be successful enough in the field of its own expertise. A particular attention of the paper is paid to Jobs' vision of innovations and their role for the Apple company.
The world historical experience proves that sustainable development of enterprises is mainly able to be achieved through the operational use of its business innovations, which would be capable of providing a strategic competitive advantage in the marketplace. By projecting all of the above mentioned facts, it should be noted that this issue is becoming increasingly important for the companies that enter into fierce competition. This assumption is currently applied to the world-famous company, Apple, which was run by Steve Jobs. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to report on the book, Steve Jobs: The Man who Thought Different, written by Blumenthal.
When reading the Jobs' biography book, it is possible to single out that this is not only the chronicle of his life, but also analytical approach to the essential stages in his carrier and development of his human resource management philosophy. The essential idea of the book is hidden in one sentence, which states that “he [Steve Jobs] wasn’t the creator of the personal computer, but he was the voice and face of the revolution”. The revolution meant in the book is the best suiting word to depict the contribution Steve Jobs made to the development of the world technologies and, as a consequence, to the humanity.
The first pages of the book, Steve Jobs: The Man who Thought Different, written by Blumenthal show the main prominent feature Steve Jobs successfully developed. Thus, the author says that “Jobs almost single-handedly introduced the world to the first computer that could sit on your desk and actually do something all by itself ”. This achievement had changed the direction of the humanity's development forever. This way of behavior made many Jobs' life's investigators state that he “developed the reputation of a perfectionist”. Thus, in accordance with Blumenthal and Allen, it is possible to find out that Steve Jobs united two essential and extremely necessary features, love to perfectionism and revolutionist.
One of the strongest features of the book, Steve Jobs: The Man who Thought Different, created by Blumenthal, is the fact that the author does not only depict the life and personal development of a person, but also shows the insights to who the person was and what philosophy he evolved. Thus, Blumenthal has a strong conviction that Steve Jobs has been a leading force in the definition of innovative strategies and innovative Apple's portfolio. The author makes a special emphasis on the fact that Steve Jobs approached the requirements of strategy and portfolio management, answering the three most important questions, which can be summarized as follows. The first question he asked was 'How many innovations are necessary for a company?' The second issue Jobs was particularly interested in is 'What are the areas you need to focus innovations on?' And, finally, the third question he was curious about is 'What are the types of innovation which a portfolio should consist of?' and 'What technological innovations are needed for this?'.
In accordance with Blumenthal, Jobs was convinced that the business strategy of any organization was both theoretically and practically dedicated to the victory. Innovation is a key element of the long-term success. However, innovation is not necessarily always the main source of a competitive advantage at the market. Over time, the value increases or decreases the need in innovation. This generally depends on a combination of several factors, including timing of the previous innovations, the nature of competition and the company's overall business strategy.
In accordance with the book's author, Steve Jobs thought that deciding what innovation strategy best suited the external competitive and market conditions, as well as the situation in the company was within the senior management team's responsibility and ultimately depends on the CEO's work. Critically analyzing the Jobs' philosophy, Blumenthal comes up to a conclusion that Jobs was convinced that a company could have stayed on the right path, even if the Executive Director had chosen the wrong innovation strategy. Selected innovative strategy should conform to the business situation and be understood throughout the organization. Very often, this fundamental first step is overlooked, and as a result the organization receives much more meager results than expected.
Notwithstanding the foregoing, Blumenthal states that it is necessary not to forget that more innovation does not mean better company's affairs. Along with this, the author shows that Jobs believed that innovation had gone too far in its apparent eagerness to create innovations. Jobs believed that all businesses need significant and continuous dose of innovation, especially radical and those, which are capable of changing the rules of the game on the market.
This belief is, in fact, ambiguous, as the writer believes. Each organization that plans existing for longer time, needs a healthy infusion of innovation and must invest in this tool. However, this does not mean that organizations need to constantly be engaged in innovations' creating process. The author of the book believes that regarding Apple, it is difficult to imagine an organization that could effectively use a constant tide of radical breakthrough innovation, all of which would lead to significant changes in its business and technological basis. This level of change can be brought down and confuse the competitors, but it would also broke the back of the innovative organization. This assumption (and the author's doubt) is especially fair in case if we take into account the huge reserves, which are related to the development of this flow of innovation, combined with a lot of stress and destabilization created by the organization as a result of drastic changes permanent.
Thus, in accordance with Blumenthal and Steve Jobs, any innovation is best done if it appears in the correct proportions. By this, they mean that ech company must decide which amount of innovation it can handle in a given period of time, how much innovation it will need in the future and determine how this set of options to achieve the desired result. Basically, these are the answers for the questions Steve Jobs asked himself.
The book, Steve Jobs: The Man who Thought Different by Blumenthal tends to highlight the key principle Steve Jobs was led by, i.e. the desire to implement and evolve the innovations. This approach is either a strong point of the book. As a consequence,in Steve Jobs' opinion, the general purpose of innovation is to ensure the specific features of the enterprise in the long term. The strategy reflects the ways to solve problems related to the internal potential of the business entity and its environment. It reveals a willingness to respond in the future not only to the market requirements, changing economic conditions in the resource markets, the fiscal policy of the state, but also to the internal technical and economic potential and management. The author of the book pays a precise attention to the way Jobs regarded his company's capacities. In this regard, it is possible to state that Jobs regarded the internal capacity as a concept, which includes evaluation of technological level of production compared to competitors, the identification of the life cycle stages and scenarios of technological change. In addition to this, he concerned a correction of the decisions taken in view of the social changes and product market trends. Jobs believed that the maximization of profits in the long term is taken as a general goal, depending on the assessment of the competitive market environment, it would be possible to define the conditions to achieve this goal. In any case, Jobs believed, this purpose is to be achieved only (!) by means of the human capital. This assumption is proved by Bray, who has a conviction that the reason of the Apple and Steve Jobs' success consisted of the fact that “Mr. Jobs revitalized Apple by transforming smartphones, computers, and media players into objects of desire. He insisted the company put the human experience first, focusing on design as well as technological prowess.” However, human experience was regarded by Jobs in an ambiguous way. Certainly, both Bluementhal and Patterson state that Jobs was keen n human resources' power. On the other hand, however, Patterson states that Steve Jobs “was crazy in the way people are when they think their will is not just stronger than anyone else's, but stronger than the evidence in front of them, and stronger than the laws of physics”. This shows the secret of Jobs' success and Apple's popularity all over the world.
Along with the numerous facts about Jobs' professional philosophy, Bluementhal shows many facts about his character's personal traits and life. Bluementhal's biographical book can be considered as an unusual life story, which closely intertwines the positive from the negative – it contains a lot of facts, which are outrageous and eventually fit into a biography of the 21st century. Being marked with the influence of world globalization, the book can be considered as a kind of biographical literature, which refers to a scandalous biography. The author does not hide the many actions of Steve Jobs, which do not characterize him positively. For instance, at the age of 23, similar to his genetic father, Steve gave up his child. However, much later, he still was to help his daughter.
The Bluementhal's biography of Steve Jobs stresses that an important stage in the life of S. Jobs was the company that received the name of Apple. Here, the crucial role had been played by the factor that the book's main character had been working on the farm for some time, where he had to cut the apples, but during the search for the name of the company he was on the apple diet. The founders of the company were Jobs, Wozniak and Wayne.
Bluementhal says that for Jobs, it was important to create not just profitable, but a brilliant product, where the Apple company workers would be sure that they can do the impossible. Thus, in the book by Bluementhal Jobs appears as a brilliant man who triumphantly moved forward, despite many obstacles, reaching the goals set. The author does not hide any of the negative effects in the biography of the hero. Bluementhal's work is based on the documents and facts known and found. The art conjecture and fiction in the book are extremely minimized.
The biography of Steve Jobs, written by Bluementhal is rather unusual, it is extremely difficult to define the genre, moreover, it contains a number of elements of experimentation that characterize the first postmodern works of the late 20th and the beginning of the 21st century. The essence of the book is that an ordinary American boy, named Steven Paul Jobs, founded his own IT-corporation bearing an eccentric name Apple in the late 1970s, together with his friend, Steve Wozniak. In the process of gradual development and rotation of capital, Jobs participated in the development of gadgets that have made the company's name. However, in 1985, under pressure from the board, he was forced to leave Apple, only to go back twelve years to save their offspring from the imminent bankruptcy. It should be emphasized that today, Steve Jobs is a definite benchmark for Americans, who represents a specific set of traits. As a world-manager, an inventor, an original and charismatic man, Jobs is a good example to many prominent and ordinary Americans, who want to reach the top.
The secret of success of Steven Paul Jobs, as Bluementhal finally states is subject to the following principle, 'do good or do not do anything at all.' This principle covers all aspects of future product from packaging, engineering and beauty design to the integrity of the technical concept, the perfect visual interface and many other things. They are very easy to save, but the quality of the finished product and customer loyalty evaporates with each concession. Jobs was aware of the fact that in electronic industry, a dangerous disease progresses, the name of which is the economies of advanced research and development.
It is obvious that for a long time Steven Paul Jobs remained the unchanged face of progress, served as a model for fans to relax and not allow competitors. With his death, the high-tech industry lost a key figure and should now learn the principles that had been introduced by Jobs, not only with respect to the legacy of the famous seer, but also for insurance against possible dark times without a leader.
Thus, summing up, it should be noted that at present a growing number of organizations recognize the importance of the strategies elaborated by Steve Jobs. This is due to the fact of increased competition: it is impossible to think only of the present day, it is necessary to anticipate and plan for possible changes in order to survive and win the competition. Innovations in this respect have an advantage, but they need to developed, strengthened and improved.
