November 5th, 2009
Fortune Magazine has christened Apple Computer’s CEO, Steve Jobs, as “CEO of the Decade.” You certainly will find no disagreement from this corner.
The Official Steve Jobs Photo from Apple Computer’s web site
You’ll find some great coverage of the man, his career and his products at the link above (reinserted here for the mouse-weary).
People tend to focus these days (naturally enough) on his more recent triumphs, but please do not forget how it all began: the Apple II, then the Mac, WYSIWYG, and taking a big chance by adopting Adobe’s nascent PostScript technology in the first LaserWriter. That event alone changed my career and my life. I still claim to have authored and typeset the very first book published by a professional publisher (Doubleday) with my 1985 publication, “Personal Letters of a Public Man: The Family Letters of John G. Diefenbaker.”
It’s fun to find out who the runners-up were. Included in the #1 spot of course are Google’s co-founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, but they lose out because “their impact has been mostly limited to online advertising.”
Warren Buffett is #2, with no word as to why he’s wasn’t the winner. Remarkably, Bernie Madoff is #3, with a comment that “Madoff’s too-good-to-be-true investing track record and audacious crime make him the fallen CEO of the decade.”
Gosh they even put Enron’s Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling, and Andy Fastow in the #5 position.
Come on! In my view Steve Jobs deserves every award there is, and placing him in the company of convicted criminals is ludicrous.
This man is clearly one of the most inventive, brilliant and capable executives in history. Three cheers!