Steve Jobs and his universities
Even Steve Jobs is gone but his legend is still living on because several months before he died, he and several top executives have been working on a special project called “Apple University” that Jobs considered vital to the company’s future by teaching future Apple leaders and managers to think like him. A senior Apple executive said: “Steve has the idea to take what is unique about Apple and create a forum that can impart that DNA to future generations of Apple employees. No other company has a “university” that probe deeply into the roots of what makes the company so successful.”
Steve Jobs was well known in creating the most successful company in the world. He was behind all critical decisions as Apple developed innovation products like iMac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad. The challenge for Apple is to maintain that kind of momentum after he is gone. Although Jobs does not want anyone in Apple mention about Apple University, he personally recruited the dean of Yale’s Business School in 2008 to run it. His instruction: “Help Apple internalizes the thoughts of its visionary founder to prepare for the day when he is not around anymore.” It is obvious that Apple needs a set of training materials so that Apple employees could learn to think and make decisions as if they were Steve Jobs. With Apple University, Jobs was trying to identify things that he believes can unleash the innovation and sustain success at Apple such as accountability, attention to detail, perfectionism, simplicity, and secrecy. For months, he oversaw the creation of university courses that demonstrate how those principles can translate into business strategies and operating practices. He often complained that today few managers or even leaders know how to think about strategy but only short terms tactical. A senior manager admitted: “Steve clearly distinguish leaders from managers as he often emphasizes that leader must innovate and be the original; manager is merely a copy and assigned to operate tasks. Apple need more leaders.”
Beside “Apple University” Jobs also wanted to create an online university for all people in the world who want to learn. He called it “iTunes-University”. At the suggestion of Steve Jobs, many universities are making recordings of lectures, seminars available to the public via iTunes web sites. All top schools from Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, Yale, Cambridge etc. make their courses available for download. That means anyone who cannot attend those famous schools can simulate the experience at home or anywhere they choose because iTunes U content can all be downloaded free of charge.
Although some people called it “A good marketing for Apple” but since it opened last year, there were million people accessed to learn about things that they cannot even dream of. An Indian student told the local newspaper: “You can watch a lecture, learn a lot and think just like I study at MIT or Stanford. The best thing is I do not have to pay anything.” On the average, for every class, there have been million downloads each week from iTunes U site. For example the course creating iPhone application from Stanford University and creating iPad application from Carnegie Mellon were downloaded more than a million times a week. Several people said that they were able to get good jobs just by learning from these practical classes. A Chinese student said: “It would take several years for our university to have classes like that but the top schools are always ahead of others so we downloaded and learned from Stanford and CMU professors. We have the newest skills that few people have and that give us a lot of advantages when we are looking for jobs.
You can check out Steve Jobs’ university at:
Sources
- Blogs of Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University
