Footprints

Almost all of the people in business world and students at universities with economics and/or financial major must have heard the name Warren Buffett, one of the world’s most influential investors who in the last week of August through Berkshire Hathaway invested US$.5 billion in Bank of America, the largest bank by assets in the United States.

Another very important world news at almost the same time that week came from Japan, the third largest economy in the world that Naoto Kan, the prime minister of the country, announced his resignation.

Those two headline breaking news were somehow shadowed by Steve Jobs’s resignation as Chief Executive of Apple. Chief Executive Officers resign everyday, so why was this one so meaningful?

In 1985 Steve Jobs was forced out of Apple, the company he actually co-founded  in 1976. He was once after being forced out ran an unsuccessful computer firm but during that exile he purchased a small computer animation  firm, Pixar, which he turned into one of the world’s most successful movie studios, later sold to Disney for $7.4 billion. In 1997, he returned to take over as CEO of Apple, which at that time was a diminished company producing mediocre products and might be only months from bankruptcy. Fourteen years later, the company is a highly profitable and the most  financially valuable.

Steve Jobs is always willing to take big risks on new ideas. He has never been satisfied with just small innovations. His persistance on producing high quality products is very well known. He is a very passionate person and a brilliant marketer as well. Many people want to be able to change the world and Steve Jobs like some other famous names in history undoubtfully has introduced the use of technology in so many different ways. Products such as iPod, iPhone, iPad which are just some of Steve Jobs’s footprints and leadership in the digital world are in fact have been changing the way hundreds of million people live since the past decade or so.

Would his resignation as CEO marks an end of an extraordinary digital era, not just for Apple but probably for the industry in general?  

He said that with the resignation from the CEO post he intends to be an active chairman of the board so he will remain be involved in the strategy and in developing major future products.

Steve Jobs has been battling cancer and related effects for seven years.   He steps back to fight against his pancreatic cancer. Though he is seriously ill, he is very much alive, and that’s why his resignation is not an usual one.