Exploring Leadership Strategies of Steve Jobs

The assignment content discusses Steve Jobs' leadership style and how it helped Apple gain a competitive advantage. It highlights Apple's focus on quality, design, and usability, as well as its investment in research and development. The company's premium pricing strategy, digital hub strategy, and distribution strategy also contributed to its success. The value chain activities discussed include primary activities such as inbound logistics, marketing and sales, and service, as well as secondary activities like firm infrastructure, human resource management, and procurement.

Running head: LEADERSHIP
Topic: Leadership
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author’s Note:

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Table of Contents
Answer 1..........................................................................................................................................3
Competitive Advantage................................................................................................................3
Business Strategy.........................................................................................................................4
Answer 2..........................................................................................................................................5
Value Chain Activities.................................................................................................................5
Primary Activities and Competitive Advantage.......................................................................5
Secondary Activities and Competitive Advantage...................................................................5
Reference List..................................................................................................................................7

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Answer 1
Competitive Advantage
Jobs always believed in simplicity, usage-ability and great design. Initially Apple
penetrated into US market through vertical and horizontal integration by manufacturing its own
processor and its own proprietary designs. On the other hand, its competitor IBM used Windows
OS and Intel Chipset, which was more compatible and faster than Apple. However, later when
Jobs again joined Apple as the CEO on August 1997, more focus was given into quality, design
and usage-ability than quantity. Apple cannibalized its profit by slashing its 15 old product lines
into just 4, which were desktop and portable Macintoshes, for consumers and professionals.
Also, Jobs started investing 12% of Apple’s revenue in research and development, which was
quite higher than Dell (1%) and HP (7%). Finally, Jobs ensured concrete secrecy “closed door
policy” and culture of confidentiality so that cloning, replication and alteration of source code
for software development could have been prevented. Through the above highlighted points,
Jobs was able to keep Apple in a favorable and superior business position.
Figure 1: R&D Contribution
(Source: Yoffie and Baldwin 2015)

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Business Strategy
All the listed competitive advantages of Apple have been possible through high revenue
generation accompanies by Premium Pricing Strategy. Even though initially Apple was lagging
behind its competitors but users loved it just because of simplicity. Therefore, high-end pricing
strategy and premium price differentiation strategy though limited the sales volume, yet Apple
was a tough competitor.
From in the year 2001, Apple started following the Digital Hub Strategy. Through this
strategy, Jobs tried to link all its peripheral products with the iMac OS and therefore actualized
the integrated strategy to link all hardware and software components. This helped in gaining
competitive advantage as Apple was the only company that stood as the one stop solution for
users to gain complete usage of technology.
Later, considering the digital-product diversification strategy, Jobs introduced
proprietary set of applications into the global market, which included the famous iLife Suite.
This created a niche marketing approach accompanied by attractive promotions. Again in 2001,
Apple started market penetration through Distribution Strategy accompanied by ‘Apple Retail
Strategy’. Through this, consumers got the taste of Apple’s physical products that increased
branding and customer loyalty.

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Answer 2
Value Chain Activities
While considering the value chain, primary and secondary activities must be discussed.
Primary Activities and Competitive Advantage
Jobs ensured that business operations must be limited and focused to specific product.
Therefore, more focus was given to Macintosh redesign and value enhancement. Considering
inbound logistics, it must be said that Jobs tried to make its own peripherals, chipset and
Operating System and for outbound logistics, products were initially sold through unofficial
stores however, from 2001, Apple Retail Store started selling PCs. For marketing and sales,
Jobs ensured premium pricing strategy, multimillion-dollar marketing campaigns, catchy slogans
and through promotional strategies featured of iMac PCs were highlighted. Finally considering
service, Jobs always thought of presenting a complete set of hardware-software package, which
included iMacs, iOS, iTunes, iPods and iLife Suite. Also, cloud based services were introduced
from 2006 that helped in gaining competitive advantage. Therefore, from the above primary
activities, it can be said that exclusive and integrated promotional activities, marketing strategies,
distributing initiatives and complete service package, Apple gained highest competitive
advantage.
Secondary Activities and Competitive Advantage
Considering Firm’s Infrastructure, it can be highlighted that Apple solely focused on
own operations without any partnership or acquisition. It started its business through vertical and
horizontal integration by designing its own peripherals and Chipsets. The best part of innovation
in Apple has been through Human Resource Management and talent acquisition. Concrete

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secrecy and culture of confidentiality was indicated by Jobs so that other companies could
remain unaware of technology. Through exclusive R&D, technology of Apple was highly
integrated including cloud services, hardware and software integration. Finally considering
procurement, it must be said that Apple followed new supplier procurement and capacity
management. Only those suppliers were selected that could enhance the value of Apple and for
capacity management Jobs limited its diversification lines to only four categories. Through the
help of the above activities, Jobs was able to create competitive advantage by limiting resource
consumption and focusing more on research and development.

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Reference List
Yoffie, D. and Baldwin, E. 2015. Apple Inc. in 2015. Harvard Business School, pp.1-30.