assigntment techno 1

1.) What are the factors that contributed to the success and failure of Steve Jobs

as a technopreneur?

Passion, persistence and charisma are just three of his lethal combinations. Who would think that a shaggy nerd of 60’s changed the way we lived life and approached to it? A man with nothing that ended with something! And that something wasn’t just something! It was something great that every living creatures with human brain hoped for—becoming successful. True, Steve Jobs did a really an excellent job! He is now an object of envy and admiration and at times, animosity. He is desired by many people today. His life story is earnestly followed, dissected, gossiped about, and his example imitated. His words are taken seriously and his advises are obeyed for they could mean financial and personal success.

teve Jobs was not born with silver spoon on his mouth. He’s a product of rags-to-richest story. He did not receive acclaim of his inventions that sudden. He worked for it. Along with his aspirations are his unrelenting efforts and dedication to his multifarious undertakings in this life.
But here’s the question, what are the factors that took him to get to the top? Well, certainly, it’s not because of the mound of ectodermal outgrowths’ which have accumulated between his upper lip and nasal passages that brought him on the pinnacle (I’m talking about his moustache!

First, Steve Jobs has a Passion. He just simply loves what he’s doing. Even from the days of his youth, he kept on exploring, learning and understanding the complexity of things. Through the familiarity and skills imparted by his father who was once a machinist, Jobs was encouraged to hone his skills. He constantly learning, building new things while still having fun. Though Jobs, at his early age, didn’t have any idea what exactly he would become in his future, all he knew he existed to change the world. It wasn’t until he met Wozniak (who soon became the co-founder of Apple), he began to realized his purpose --- “revolutionizing the world of personal computing”. Together with Wozniak, they perseveringly strived. They exerted everything within their means and performed best and achieved what Apple has now. Steve’s Passion pushed him to become innovative and creative. It was his passion alone that kept him on moving, working and inventing despite being fired from the company he used to helped exist. What the distinguishing factor of Steve, he’s not like to those people who would just turn back and get destroyed after a devastating crisis. I believed, only death can stop him from innovating and being zealous. Steve Jobs taught me an important lesson; our knowledge is not a prime necessity to become victorious. It’s our Passion. Passion alone can make us alive. There’s no question how a person do extremely well on a field he/she simply love. Exactly like what Steve said “The only way to do great is to love what you do.”

Second, Steve Jobs has a Vision. Despite the fact that he was just a speck on the business he choose to live in, it did not became a hindrance for him to overshadow of how he view his future. Steve Jobs simply kept on continuing on his career, never feared taking risks and go in directions that were less traveled. His vision of changing the world gave him a large amount of self-confidence. He always aspired putting his company on the top of the list—and he did! Steve Jobs had the ability to think in new perspective. He never refused new ideas ( In his office, even though he’s sort of rejecting his employees suggestions, in truth, he actually kept on considering them. ) He employed various strategies—along with either so-called “Brilliant Ideas” to ensure the realization of his plans.

Third, Steve Jobs as a charismatic leader. The ideology and tactics of Steve bring wealth to the Apple Company. His charisma hammered his opponents including IBM. Steve was good in persuading people. He’s good in presenting and marketing their products. He could make a ‘No’ a ‘Yes’ or the other way around. Though Steve’s management style sucks, at some point, still it was effective. It made his employees compete with each other like what happened between Apple ll and Macintosh teams. Bringing so much noise on the company and eventually makes a good effect on the part on the company alone. According to him, “Creativity springs from fear”. As far as he could, he wanted to make his employees feel they were under Martial Law. He’s good in manipulating people; however he’s not good of noticing he’s also being manipulated, like what Bill gates did on him. But after all, still Steve is living with his principle. And it’s up to you if you are into it or not—it’s not his problem anymore.

Fourth, Steve has both determination and persistence. Steve treated his obstacles as stepping stones instead of stumbling blocks. He just kept on learning and inventing by constantly experimenting with those circuit boards. Despite being someone who has nothing, he was still able to stand on his ground. He remained determined and persistent. He refused to be discouraged and never let disappointments get the upper hand. That’s the good thing of being like Steve Jobs. The challenges spurred him on to greater effort.

Lastly, Steve Jobs is simply smart. Though people of his time viewed no clear indications (especially in computer industry) on the advancement of technology, Steve Jobs made it. Jobs creativity and innovations proved them all to be wrong. Even if he was dropped out in college, his skills and talent keep him on track. One of the distinguishing factors of Steve is that he just keep on exploring. He simply did nit like sticking into the results of the other people. He would rather like people would depend on the results of his thinking. Hr gave new approaches to old techniques. Better and brilliant that no one could ever imagine until brought into reality.

On the other hand, Step Jobs was not a consistent icon of success. He too experienced failures. Being fired from the company he helped to exist was the hardest thing that ever happened to Steve but somehow the greatest opportunity for him to be innovative in other aspect of technology. In accordance with what I’ve read on the net, Steve jobs management style was always been being gossiped about. He was horrible, arrogant, demanding, inconsistent, etc as they described him and through viewing entirely the movie “pirates of the Silicon valley” he really are. If the great advisor says in order to have a smooth relationship with your employees, you must be nice to the people around you, but for Steve Jobs? That’s, a joke.

2.) How do you see yourself as a technopreneur?

Can I really earn from technology? People think nowadays about their future. They think seriously, of course life is not a joke. But sometimes people don't know how to do it. Well in fact the things they need is just around them. The keep on looking for money and they are looking for it badly. Sadly, they don't really know about earning through technology. Technopreneurship, sounds weird right? But that is how it's called.

Technopreneurship is the key to earn money through technology. The word came from 2 different words. First, technology, and next is entrepreneurship, where it means business. People are really struggling for survival but they don't know that the stuffs that could save them from annihilation and broke is just beside them. Yes just beside them, they only need a computer and an internet connection. That's how amazing it is. And worst of it lots of people don't see this stuff and have no plan for their future. So could this be? Ok, first thing's first, There are lots of offers in the internet, ranging from advertising to affiliate business to freelance writing and now how could you say it's impossible to do. Well, it's up with you, as many wise people say, "whether you think you can or you think you cannot, either way you're right." There are really lots of stuffs in the web that you could earn from. Or you would use anything that is a masterpiece of technology. Being Technopreneur is really the things people consider now. Especially these times that we have job inflation rate and based on statistics, here in Philippines, we have 13,000,000 people jobless. Yes, but sad to say, it is the reality. Being aTechnoprenuer really helps this kind of situation. Why? Because when you start a business, you could hire your fellowmen as your employees and you can give job to them. So you help yourself to have a financial freedom and at the same time, you help other people.

Now, do we really need to become a Technopreneur? It is your choice. Well as of now I really do earn with this. Hope you do it to and start to have you financial freedom. Hope this helps.

3.) Would you take the same career path that Steve Jobs took?! Why or Why not?

Several of us discuss this same topic in support as well. There seem to be two basic career paths for technical support personnel.
a) coming from a customer service background and learning the tech skills later
b) coming from the CompSci world (mostly programming) and learning or possessing the customer service skills

The overall mind set for tech managers seems to be that it's easier to take someone from a > b versus b > a and for the most part that has been true in the past. However, the trend now seems to be for the products themselves to get more and more complex to where even basic support functions are becoming hard without the background tech skills.

Just look at the upcoming 11g ECM releases and you can see the challenges the the people in the a) category

So, my thoughts related to this thread would be;

Having a background in programming helps in all functions of managing, supporting and delivering a tech product but ultimately it's how you work with your team that determines "good" from "bad". I think the background knowledge simply speeds up the communication between co-workers and/or customers.

Here's a specific example, when I started with "Stellent" like most people I didn't know idoc script but because of some core skills I was able to pick it up in just 1-2 days. Conversely there are still support people that struggle with even the most basic scripting functions inside a workflow event. Now, these people can usually get through those issues but it takes the customer much more time to explain and walk through the business process than someone that can just look at the code and see an infinite loop without even needing the customer to explain the whole process.

If the ability to code is primarily effective as a communications tool to convey a concept of what the product manager wants, then are there other tools out there? Certainly there are. Even a graphically-challenged person like myself can scribble a picture that roughly shows my vision, or if my vision is based on something else, I can simply say "I want something like Twitter" or whatever. Or I can convey what I want in text, via various communication methods, ranging from the general (marketing requirements) to the more specific (design documents).

However, I believe that being the CEO of a product doesn't mean that you have to come up with all of the ideas. Using the Steve Jobs example, he clearly had a vision of what he wanted to do, but at the same time he gathered people around him with their own ideas of what THEY wanted to do.

Any product is going to be created by a team, and the actual duties of people are obviously affected by the strengths and weakness of the people on the team. In my years in product manager, I did not consider myself a proficient coder (my brief professional experience in HyperTalk would only tangentially be applicable to the Java & web stuff our programmers were actually doing), and I did not consider myself a professional architect, but I believe that I made up for these deficiencies by communicating to those people who WERE good coders and architects, as well as to customers and to the other stakeholders of the product