Leadership and Business Strategy at Apple Inc.: A Comprehensive Report

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of leadership at Apple Inc., examining the leadership styles of Steve Jobs and the company's subsequent leaders. The report delves into the background of Apple, its evolution, and the challenges it faced, including Jobs' initial ousting and his eventual return. It highlights the problems encountered, such as the failure of certain products and the importance of understanding market sentiments. The report discusses both short-term and long-term solutions to these issues, emphasizing the need for teamwork, marketing research, and maintaining cordial relationships within the management. The conclusion underscores the significance of effective leadership in aligning the company's efforts towards its goals and objectives, drawing lessons from Apple's journey and the impact of various leadership approaches on its success. The report references several academic sources to support its analysis.

Running Head: Leadership
Table of Content:
Introduction...........................................................................................................................................2
Background of the company..................................................................................................................3
The Problem..........................................................................................................................................4
Short Term Solution...............................................................................................................................4
Long Term Solution................................................................................................................................5
Apple Inc.
Leadership

Leadership P a g e | 1
Introduction
Leadership can be understood both as a science and art. It is the defined as the process by which a
person influences other people to accomplish their goals and objectives and link it with the business
goals & objectives of the organization. Leadership is a quality, or a trait which is possessed by an
individual. It can be learned or inherent, there is no single way out for someone to have leadership
qualities. Leadership is the foundation on which success of any company is laid on. Leaders have
their own charisma, magnetic personality and an aura which encompasses the people around.
Leaders believe in taking a path which is less traversed, they like exploring; they like taking risk,
facing challenges and overcome them (Boettcher & Davydov, 2015)
Leadership is not an easy job; it is coupled with many roadblocks in the path and friction from the
team. The one who overcomes all these displays the rare quality of true leadership. In this report it
will be discussing an example of leadership in the real world. Steve jobs was an exemplary leader, he
had all the traits of leadership, and he always knew where his head was, strong minded, focussed
and displayed brilliant salesmanship. It will discuss the problems he faced with apple, how he was
thrown out of the company he built, and later picked the company up on his shoulders and
converted it into one of the biggest tech companies of the world.

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Background of the company
Apple incorporation is an American multinational technology company with its headquarters in
Cupertino, California. The company is into designing, developing and selling of consumer electronics,
computer software and online services. It is one of the world’s largest tech companies which is
currently under the leadership of Tim cook and is basking in the brand equity laid by Steve jobs. The
company is world’s ninth largest company by revenue. The company has been in news since it first
started its operation in the year 1976; Apple disrupted the entire industry by launching
breakthrough products which people never imagined off. Putting 1000 songs in few centimetres
worth of a device was unimaginable, but Steve jobs knew that the future was giving technology in
the hands of the consumer. Till date the company works on making the lives of people better by
constantly innovating new products for its ever increasing consumer base (Grant, 2016)

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The Leader
Steve jobs was born in the year 1955 to two graduates of Wisconsin institute who gave him for
adoption, he was adopted by Paul Jobs & Clara Hagopian. Jobs were raised in San Francisco and
went for his formal education to Reed College. He dropped out of the college and travelled to India
to receive spiritual enlightenment and studying Zen Buddhism. Coming back from India Jobs
registered Apple Incorporation and started working in his father’s garage with his friend Steve
Wozniak before moving to bigger space in California. Steve jobs was focussed on Apple, but after he
was thrown out of his own company he worked with Pixar as its CEO and founded another company
of his own before joining Apple again in the year 1997. Steve jobs was known to be really arrogant to
his employees, that was basically because he was so focussed and particular about what he wanted.
Some say that he was a dictatorial leader, who dictated things to his team. Despite being arrogant
and dictator he was hugely anticipated for his product and marketing genius. Jobs believe in the
concept of selling that says “People actually don’t know what they need, until you show and tell
them”
The Problem
Apple since 1976 is known to democratizing the technology and making machines smaller, cheaper,
and intuitive and user friendly. Apple has been the reason for smartphones, tablets, personnel PC
and the compact laptops it use in our daily lives. Apple 1, the first product company launched was an

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overnight success; similarly Apple 2 raked in millions of dollars for the company. In June 1980, Steve
jobs went ahead and hired John Scullery (CEO of Pepsi) as CEO of the company. Post 1980, several
products of Apple failed. The company was hoping that Macintosh would change the future for
Apple, as it was positioned as youthful, creative and a romantic product, but sadly, the product failed
miserably. Everyone at Apple blamed Steve jobs for the failure of the product, his high price strategy
and his heavy investment in R&D.IBM surpassed apple in sales, and John scullery felt that Jobs was
hurting the brand Apple and hence, Steve jobs was thrown out of his own company in the year
1985(Boone & Kurtz, 2013)
Short Term Solution
The problem faced by Steve jobs was due to his incapability to read his audience. He positioned the
product according to his desires. It was a big failure on the research side to understand the
sentiments of the target audience. Hence it is advised to conduct a good marketing research before
launching the product in the market.
Second solution to the problem faced by Steve jobs can be resolved with team work, the team at
Apple was at the guts of Steve jobs, as explained earlier he followed a dictatorial style of leadership ,
which definitely does not goes down well with the employees.
Long Term Solution
 Coordinal relationship with the management- Steve Jobs was full of himself, with little
concern given to the stakeholder’s interest, this was the reason he was thrown out of the
company. Needless to say, if he had cordial relationship with the management, he would
have never been thrown out of his own company.
 Marketing Sentiments-Every company needs to understand the pulse of its audience before
launching a product. On the contrary Steve jobs introduced product in the market without
having a fair understanding how market would react to it. Hence, it is highly advisable to
conduct marketing research and then gradually move to the stage of Product development.
 Team work- A team is supposed to attain the goals set by the management and not just an
individual. Steve jobs never believed in team work. He was a dictator, which was a reason for
failure behind Macintosh. Team builds synergies and achieves the objectives and goals set by
the organization, failure of which leads in disarray and mismanagement. Therefore, it is

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extremely important to have team work and give equal weightage to the ideas presented on
the table(Lewis, 2014)
Conclusion:
Apple Incorporation is a big brand and has been since its inception. The company has gone through
various changes in its leadership, starting from Steve jobs to Sully and then again back to Steve jobs,
before it finally shifted in the hands of Tim cook. The company is one of the greatest in the history of
technology disrupters in the market; however there is a lot to learn from Apple. The company went
through a bad phase during 1985-1997; it was due to lack in leadership and failure to understand the
objectives and goals of the company. Thus it can be emphasized that a leader has to take full control
of the organization and synergize the efforts of the company in the direction of organizational goals
and objectives.
References:
Boettcher, J., & Davydov, A. (2015). U.S. Patent No. D725,134. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and
Trademark Office.

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Grant, R. M. (2016). Contemporary Strategy Analysis Text Only. John Wiley & Sons.
Boone, L. E., & Kurtz, D. L. (2013). Contemporary marketing. Cengage learning.
Lewis, T. G. (2014). Booms. In Book of Extremes (pp. 51-67). Springer International Publishing.