12 Most Important Quotes for Business from Steve Jobs

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Steve Job’s resignation from Apple has been the hot topic around the water cooler and the “Web Cooler” this past week. Personally, I’ve never be the militant fan that Apple and Mr. Jobs have so successfully cultivated but I’ve always been a honest admirer of the man’s ability to communicate his vision, which built – and continuously reinvented – what is now the biggest brand in the world.

I make it a habit to jot down great quotes from leaders that have inspired me in a business journal and among the online chatter and articles written this past week speculating “what’s next” for Apple,  I was reminded of one that I documented a little while ago:

Don’t waste time living someone else’s life. Stay hungry. Stay Foolish.

- Steve Jobs

And when I skimmed through the other quotes, I realized many were attributed to Mr. Jobs. They have served me well over the years; helping me successfully manage businesses and teams and so I’m presenting my list of the 12 Most Important Quotes for Business from Steve Jobs in hopes that they will inspire you as well.

1. You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.

2. Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.

3. The people who are doing the work are the moving force behind the Macintosh. My job is to create a space for them, to clear out the rest of the organization and keep it at bay.

4. Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.

5. Kick-start your brain. New ideas come from watching something, talk to people, experimenting, asking questions and getting out of the office!

6. Your customers dream of a happier and better life. Don’t move products. Enrich lives.

7. We think the Mac will sell zillions, but we didn’t build the Mac for anybody else. We built it for ourselves. WE were the group of people who were going to judge whether it was great or not. WE weren’t going to go out and do the market research. We just wanted to build the best thing we could build.

8. It’s only by saying ‘no’ that you can concentrate on the things that are really important.

9. That’s been one of my mantras – focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.

10. Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes, the ones who see things differently – they’re not fond of rules…because the ones how are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.

11. It took us three years to build the NeXT computer. If we’d given customers what they said they wanted, we’d have built a computer they’d have been happy with a year after we spoke to them – not something they’d want now.

12. Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design IS how it works.

I’m a PC. However, Apple’s Founder has improved my leadership abilities and success. And so I thank you Mr. Jobs. I look forward to “what’s next.

Image courtesy of acaben. Used under creative commons, some rights reserved.

Sam Fiorella

http://www.senseiwisdom.com/

Sam Fiorella is a globetrotting interactive marketing strategist who has earned his stripes over the past 20 years in senior management roles with corporate sales &marketing teams as well as consulting for more than 30 marketing agencies. Sam’s experience with over 1600 Interactive projects during the past 15 years spans the government, finance & insurance, manufacturing, national retail and travel/tourism sectors. Currently, Sam is the Chief Strategy Sensei at Sensei Marketing, where he is charged with strategic campaign guidance and marketing technology development that power the Sensei Customer Lifecycle Methodology. Sam is a respected blogger and popular keynote speaker on marketing, branding and social media communications having presented at more than 200 conferences in the past 2 years. Follow Sam on Twitter or Connect with him on LinkedIn.