Pirates of the Silicon Valley Reflection

1. What are the factors that contributed to the success and failure of Steve Jobs as a technopreneur?

                Steve Jobs is one of the most successful man in the history of computers and technology. As he studied and develop new computers with his friends. Even Steve Jobs, and his friends, don't have enough money to develop it. They didn't give up to their ideas in making a computer. They started with a borrowed money to develop their newly created company called Apple in their garage. And until he become a successful as Bill Gates who become a contributor in the history of technology. In the movie Pirates of the Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs really do something great and however he face success and failures in his entire career. Just like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs works hard to develop and present his ideas to the people, and until many investors invest to Steve Job's Apple Company. He is very passionate in every action he takes. He didn't lose hope and he never give up even if his creations had failed. Until he discovered and make an Operating system for his computer. Steve Jobs is a simple man with a passion. He loves what he's doing in life. He kept on exploring new things, and discover them. Learn and understand each concept and generate new ideas to develop.

Some factors that contributed to the success of Steve Jobs:

Ability to see a gold through a rock:

Steve Jobs was, according to his friend Wozniak, never like us. He was the kind of person who always saw things differently, so his level of thinking was never ordinary. One of the factors that contributed to his success was his level of thinking, his different approach and the way he saw things in a different way. Most of us when we see a delicious egg pie on a table we think of how delicious the pie must be, we think of wanting to eat the pie and how hungry we are. That’s how we usually think. Steve Jobs, however, was the kind of person who had thoughts beyond that. He was that person who wondered who had baked the pie, what the ingredients were and how they were made, and most importantly, if the pie would be salable enough to produce a profit. That’s how Steve Jobs thinks. That’s how he saw things differently. While most people think how hungry they must be, Steve Jobs thinks how to make something to satisfy their needs. In a way or another, Steve Jobs eyes’ had the potential to see some valuable gold behind a stupid rock. This one factor had contributed a lot to his success in his career.

Faith: Jobs didn’t always know what he was doing in life. A college dropout, many gave up on him and had little faith in his abilities. But, Jobs didn’t give up on himself. He continued pursuing avenues that he found interesting, trusting that in the end it would be more meaningful and even perhaps useful. He soon learned that everything in his life, even the most terrible things, seem to happen for a reason and he is now able to place a certain amount of trust in the uncontrollable.

Passion: “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work,” says Jobs. From his first days working at his father’s workbench, Jobs knew that his future lay in the creation of things. It wasn’t until he met Wozniak in 1968 that he knew what those things were – personal computers. Despite failures such as Apple III and being fired from the company he helped found, Jobs managed to come back out on top because he knew that he didn’t want to devote his life to anything but his passion.

Courage: After being diagnosed with cancer and facing the threat of death, Jobs made a recovery and vowed to make the most of the second chance that he was given. He kept his eyes and ears open and had the courage to seize new opportunities as they came along. Whether risky or outright foolish, Jobs was from then on out determined to follow his intuition in guiding his business decisions. And, at a net worth of over $4 billion, it paid off.

Innovation: When other CEOs were focusing on sales and financing, Jobs was concerning himself with the next big thing. Personally meeting with suppliers and suppliers’ suppliers, Jobs made it his top priority to keep on top of the next frontier. By filling his company with only the brightest of people, Jobs continues to work towards ensuring Apple a place at the top of the market for years to come. 

Vision: An open mind and the ability to put new twists on old techniques was one of the key distinguishing factors between Jobs and his competitors. From cute and utilitarian ads to those that appealed to counterculture rebellion, Jobs’ vision was integrated into every aspect of the company’s strategy. If you dreamed of changing the world, then Jobs was out to prove any way he could that you needed an Apple computer to do it.

Self Motivation: Steve Jobs did not want to stay stagnant. He wanted a change. A change that would rewrite the history of how mankind thinks. He did not limit his self to change his country, or make impact to his local neighbors, no, Steve Jobs was never like that he had set his mind to make a universal change. He wanted a revolution. To Steve Jobs, a change was not enough, he wanted to create a completely new consciousness. He had this thought pattern that was always one step ahead of us. And because of his self-motivation, his confidence grew like never before. Because he had so much protein in his brain, he used them up in a way that would benefit not only him but for the entire globe.

The People Around Him: The help he got from his employees, their hard work, their assistance, and their 90+ hours of work every week had contributed a lot to Steve Jobs success. If it weren’t for them, Steve Jobs couldn’t make it. Because even though he was a genius, Steve needed a workforce. He could not do it on his own. He needed a team. His team contributed a lot to his success.

Nonetheless, we all know that behind every success there is a failure. We all know of the success of Steve Jobs, and that how he became a history behind the Apple computers. But apart from that, Jobs, like every other technopreneurs in this world of technology, had also encountered failures in his life.

Risk taker: Steve Jobs determination made him a risk-taker. That was one of the factors that contributed to his success. He wasn’t afraid to grab the challenge, and he was always prepared to fail. But his determination to succeed was far more greater than his preparedness to fail, that was why, he effortlessly overcame the failure. If he allowed the failure to devour his dream, he wouldn’t be able to make it. Steve Jobs battled carefully. He was committed to an idea or any product to make it successful. Steve Jobs had his own philosophy when it comes to his field—he had his own vision, execution, and he had a focus without getting afraid of the possible risks. And because of these factors, Steve Jobs succeeded.

Some factors that contributed to the failures of Steve Jobs:

Prideful and too confident: In the movie Pirates of the Silicon Valley, we had seen how Steve Jobs had become too confident and proud of his ability, to the point that he unnecessarily humiliate his employees. Steve Jobs was a proud man, and well, he had the reason to become proud. But his too much pride and his too much confidence had also contributed to his failure in his technopreneurship journey. It is said that the pride of man is also the fall of man.

Attitude problem: He had the temper. And he was insanely great. His greatness did also lead him to his failure as a good leader. In fact, as I have understood it, Bill Gates was a greater leader than Steve. Bill Gates was a smooth talker while Steve Jobs was most of the time rude, if not harsh. We all have tempers. Steve Jobs had one, too. But because he was insanely great as other people describe him so, Steve Jobs’ temper was never like us. His temper and menace was one of the factors of his failures.

Lack of communication:

He failed to communicate to his people, to his employees, and he failed to understand that they were also humans capable of making mistakes. Steve Jobs looked at himself, of what he had greatly done, but he failed to look at the persons…of their feelings.

 

Self Obsessed: Steve Jobs was, of course, self-obsessed. To him his well-being was more important than others. He was too confident to the point that he refused to acknowledge his own mistakes. It was put on display when he denied his daughter. He did not acknowledge that his girlfriend was pregnant by him. It was more controversial since Steve Jobs himself was an orphan, in fact, he had spent much of his adult life looking for his real mother. This part of his life was one of the failures of Jobs.

Because he was self-obsessed, and too proud, and that he had a temper, they all contributed to his failure. Before he was successful, he failed. Steve Jobs, like everybody else, was once a product of a failure

References/Sources:

http://www.evancarmichael.com/Famous-Entrepreneurs/568/Chipping-His-Way-To-The-Top-Jobs-Success-Factors.htmlaid

http://ninesilos.com/2013/07/31/factors-that-contributed-to-steve-jobs-success-failure/

2. How do you see yourself as a technopreneur? 

                I can see myself as a technopreneur in a way such that I can build something new from a crazy idea in terms of business and technology. By applying my knowledge and create and develop my ideas. I can become like Steve Jobs who he is very smart and innovative in such a way that he tried and tried with his friends to be a successful person, as like him, I want to pursue my goals and see my future as a technopreneur with my innovative ideas.

                Well, what really a technopreneur looks like or what they really do in business with technology. A technopreneur is an entrepreneur who is technology savvy, creative, innovative, dynamic, dares to be different and take unexplored path, and very passionate about their work. Technopreneurship is not a product but a process of synthesis in engineering the future of a person, an organization, a nation and the world. Strategic directions or decision making processes are becoming more demanding and complex. This requires universities, and in site professional development programs and training to produce strategic thinkers who will have skills to succeed in a rapidly changing global environment. Traditional university programs, however, lack the teaching methods to turn today's students into creative, innovative, visionary, global leaders who understand the importance of technopreneurship. High tech and entrepreneurial skills are driving our economy back to prosperity. Technopreneurship merging technology prowess and entrepreneurial skills is the real source of power in today's knowledge based economy. A technopreneur distinguishes logic from tradition, tradition from prejudice, prejudice from common sense and common sense from nonsense while integrating a variety of ideas from diverse groups and disciplines.

                They take challenges and strive to lead their life with greater success. They don't fear to fail. They take failure as a learning experience, a stimulator to look things differently and stride for next challenge. Technopreneurs continuously go through an organic process of continual improvement and always try to redefine the dynamic digital economy. For me as a student, and soon to be a technopreneur in terms of technology and business. I am developing my skills further so that I can be like them someday like Steve Jobs and Other successful man in terms of technology business. And for me, I wanted to take risk so that even I fail many times but someday I will become a successful in the future. I wanted to become a successful person in life, In order to see myself in the future as a technopreneur, I must have the required skills and knowledge and especially my ideas. I must go and explore always until I passed my limits.

                By exploring new things, I can learn it and make something new about my discoveries and make new better ideas, and I will try to develop it. We all know, that some people always judge to someone they really don't know. For some reason they always said that for an example: Steve Job's is gifted so he become successful and invent apple, Bill Gates is gifted because of his successful in making Microsoft. They are all wrong, because all people are gifted, in such a way where will they use their skills and capabilities. Some of these people have hidden talents among them, well we don't know he will become a successful technopreneur someday, we must not judge to the other people, because they earned respect because of their hard work in life and they don't give up and become successful. For me also, if I going to learn and explore each day, I will gain many experiences to overcome future problems in life. Obstacles that will prevent you from being a technopreneur in the near future. So I must take different path and accept each risk , and I must overcome it in a simple way with my knowledge and skills. And also, In order to achieve my goals, I must be a man with courage and have a complete confidence inside me when facing problems in order to develop and improve my capabilities further by experience. But in order to become a successful technopreneur, you must not work alone, because working alone will not let you become successful in life, it will become burden in your life. You must have friends beside you and specially your team, to help you and help them in order to achieve your goals. Because it is the main key to become successful in life and to become a successful technopreneur. Because friends and your team, is there to help you anytime with your problems to solve, and all of you have passion towards a single goal in life, to become rich, earn money, and build up your own company and become a successful technopreneur.

                So what does it take to make it as a technopreneur? To Startup or not to Startup?

                Most successful entrepreneurs would probably agree that making it an increasingly crowded start up scene, wherever you are, boils down to some basic principles common to every business. Firstly it is about having an idea. Then it is about testing that idea. Beyond that, and probably most importantly, it is about maintaining your belief in your project and being prepared to put in the hours, weeks, months, and years it usually takes to turn a dream into a viable reality. Stubbornness and determination are adjectives you hear attributed to the biggest names in entrepreneurship, time and time again.

               

                Technopreneurship differs from general entrepreneurship in one critical sense, it involves high technology. Regular entrepreneurship is about finding a market opportunity and assembling the solutions, resources, and management processes to convert that opportunity into a business. Technopreneurship adds another dimension of complexity to this, however. Because, above and beyond these basics, the technopreneur works at the level of research and development of the technology itself. To pull it simply, the tech start up has to not only monetize the technology they work with, but ensure it works for the end customer.

"You've got to start with the customer experience and work back toward the technology - not the other way around."

-Steve Jobs, May 1997, World Wide Developers Conference

There are 7 skills to become a successful technopreneur in the near future:

A technology entrepreneur must possess some extraordinary qualities to succeed:

Visionary: Sees things other human beings don't see: opportunity. Thinks about how to make a new system that works, instead of griping about the system not working. Has a single minded focus on solving the problem he's chosen to tackle. Willing to explore multiple possibilities to get to an optimal solution.

Learner: An active learner who has a thirst for knowledge. Sets time aside to pick up more skills. Takes things apart, even breaks them, to understand concepts.

Hustler: Sells ideas and buys collaborators. Identifies lesson that comes with being a start up entrepreneur and moves on. Speaks with confidence, because he believes in what he's doing.

Systematic: Knows how to prioritize among the multitude of tasks to attend to. Has a method to the madness, a personal system that helps them get things done.

Passionate: Obsesses over ideas, both as grand plans and as minute details. Everything matters. Does things differently because of this passion.

Driven: Goes and changes things because he can. Driven by constant discontent with the status quo. Looking for better ways to do things and get better results.

Grounded: Seeks balance between pursuing insane targets and being emotionally grounded. Understands the need for a support system, especially among family and friends.

Most successful and effective technopreneurs...

Are not born, but made. People become successful in life because their life is full of hard work and dedication, and with enough experience they can achieve their long time goals in life.

Is most often not a one man team. He works with a team. As what I say above, being successful is not being alone in life, you must have friends and especially your very own team. To share problems with each other, and find solutions for the biggest problems. Working in a team is different from working alone. Because you and your team helps each other to achieve your same goals in life.

Is trained by a mentor. To become a successful in life. We must seek other's help and get some advices from them, because we can learn from them so that it can apply to our experience and build more something special. Also we must be inspired by someone who become successful like Steve Jobs.

Is a calculated risk taker. We must take different paths, and also we must become a risk taker, in every action we must risk, even we fail, but in the end, it will be worth it, because if we faced the problems, we can move on and be successful.

Shares the burden of responsibility to other team members. We must not keep our own problems on our own. Because we have friends and team members who can help us despite in any problem. Friends and team members can help you and find a solution out of it.

Understand the needs of the customers. We must also care the complaints and needs of our customers, because they are the one who buys your products and become rich. And also we must not argue with them.

Love what they do. We must appreciate our friends and team members efforts. And we must support them what they love, like they loved to work especially improving your team  plans and developments.

References/Sources:

http://www.slideshare.net/rubenlicera/technopreneurship-what-it-is-and-what-its-not-20120506

https://www.netacadadvantage.com/experience-skills/experience-skills-blog/-/blogs/do-you-have-what-it-takes-to-be-a-technopreneur-

http://www.hit.ac.zw/engineering-and-technology-technopreneurship.html

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

                It is very hard to decide if I want to take the same career path that Steve Jobs took. Because if you imagine the hard work and dedication of Steve Jobs to make his own company and making a PC (Personal Computer) which completely functional. And there are many obstacles to face before you become a technopreneur. I watched the movie "Pirates of the Silicon Valley" for the very first time. And it was the story of Apple and Microsoft. And the career of Steve Jobs is very difficult to follow but you can follow it by your own will. Because nowadays, successful technopreneurs is selling their new products. It is very easy to sell new products because of the fast and new technologies discovered each day. And it helps them to learn new experiences and ideas. We all know that Steve Jobs is very ambitious in life, even in his high school days. He always aim for high to become successful and pursue his goals in life to have a company in terms of creating something new, and to improve further and by the use of technology. Steve Jobs is very competitive in gaining fame and improving his career, especially his company Apple and his first Computer Macintosh. He start his business in a garage with his friends and families, and borrow money to start their business because they don't have any money to start it. Steve Jobs is very smart and productive in his own ways. And soon he becomes a great technopreneur in the whole world, and with his ideas and development, it contributed to the history of PC (Personal Computers) until now. He never give up even he fall from the top, because he believe that someday, he will become a successful man and be a great technopreneur. He have passion, hardwork, and knowledge to create better ideas. He uses these skills and capabilities step by step so that he can achieve his goals in life. Steve Jobs become an inspiration to all the youths today, as they want to gain knowledge to create and innovate something new in the future and become successful. I admire him also in such a way he create new ideas and technologies to be development in real world. Steve Jobs taking his passion in action, and not gone to waste.

                But to answer the question, should I take the same career path that he took? I should yes and a no. Yes, in such a way that I want to follow his career that starts with a young age as me, and become competitive and talented to become successful. And in a way that he never give up, and never waste his ideas to nothing, but to make his ideas to come and be develop. because of his hard work and dedication in early age, and his passion to give his best. I am eager to learn and understand new concepts of technology. And to discover my own ideas to be develop in the near future, and become also a great technopreneruship. And I am interested to explore new ideas and opportunities and accept failures in life. I will do my best, as the other students like me with same interest. And I should say no, in such a way that I want to have my own career path in life with different ways and style of my own to become successul in life. I want to learn in my own journey to technopreneruship, I want to see my own kind of progress in life, which I want to take own. Face my career with different problems to overcome and hardships along the way. I want it in a simple way that all my hard works will be paid off. And soon in the future, with my own style and career path I will become a great technopreneur like Steve Jobs who become successful in his business with computers and technology.

                As a student today, I must focus on my studies and work hard and improve my learnings and accept failures in life. Because I can learn in my failures, and also, while I'm still studying, I want to improve my ideas so that I can develop it in the near future and announce to the world my creation of new beginning, new technology. And I want to plan ahead of time while I'm still studying so that my ideas will be improve each day, and step by step, I will become a great entrepreneur and be known to the whole world what I contributed to the technology.

Some Life Lessons From Steve Jobs We Should Never Forget:

He loved what he did for his company, the people who worked there, their products and couldn’t have done anything else.

Sure he became a billionaire over time when he brought Apple back from the brink of bankruptcy, but I don’t think Steve could have done anything else. He wouldn’t have done anything else. Apple was his calling, even after he got fired from the company.  We all have bad jobs at one point or another in our lives. But the big question you have to ask yourself is: am I in the right job for me? Have I found the right company? Is this the right set of people I want to be with? Will this lead to fulfilling work and thus a fulfilling career? If yes, great. If no, change things quick. Life doesn’t go on forever (as we also saw from Steve). Get on your right path now.

Don’t tolerate bozos around you.

Throughout his life, Steve had a great “bozo” detector. He did a super job of not letting bozos proliferate at his companies. He weeded them out if they were there until they weren’t.  You’ll never be perfect at it and neither was Steve but the key thing is that bozos sap energy from you and the best people in the company working with you. Bozos make bozo decisions. Bozos hire worse bozos beneath them. Stamp them out.  Don’t let them take root around you.

You can’t do it all yourself.

Between Steve Jobs’ first stint at Apple and his last, he became a much better manager of people.  He still could tear the hide off someone if he didn’t think they did their job, but his outbursts were far fewer and far less hostile later in life than before. He learned you can’t do it all yourself in your career at least not if you want to see your work succeed on a massive scale.  You need people.  They must be talented. They must be inspired. They must be held accountable. They must be given the opportunity to succeed and fail on their own and not just be a puppet for your will.  In short, you have to learn to be a great leader and manager of people if you want to see your great ideas and hard work truly have a huge impact on the world.

If you want to sell an idea, product or service, put yourself in the other person’s shoes.

If you had to pick one thing that was special about Steve and Apple compared to all the companies that came before it, you’d have to say it was that Apple more than any other company of our time – was always the best at dreaming up a new product that we never could have imagined beforehand but seemed so natural to us the first time we held it.  That’s empathy. That’s seeing the world not as it is but as it should be.  It’s started from that first touch the user has with a product and says “ahh” to the beginning and building what is needed which may look nothing like what exists today.

 You don’t beat the competition at their game. You redefine the game.

How did Apple go from being 3 months away from being shut down to introducing the iPhone 10 years later?  They didn’t play the computer game the way everyone said they needed to play it.  Napster was created and made music essentially free. Apple created the next “Walkman” in the iPod which forced users to pay for music.  Dell was the dominant PC player during much of that time, selling bland looking computers with no middle man to keep costs down.  Apple created a bunch of Apple stores.  This was as radical as if Google decided today that they were going to build a bunch of Google stores.  The leading smart phones before the iPhone all had physical keyboards like the BlackBerry, Palm Treo, Good technology, and the first versions of Google’s Android.  Apple came up with something utterly different.

Don’t mess around with your health.

I once was chatting with someone about the lessons Steve Jobs’ life could teach us. I ran through a list of business ideas. He stopped me in said: “you’re forgetting the most important lesson from his life: don’t mess around with your health, especially when doctors give you serious advice.”  And he was right. It’s great to celebrate Steve’s life and learn from it now but, the fact is, he should still be here.  And he probably would still be here if he had aggressively treated his cancer, like his doctors wanted, when they first found it. Instead, Steve messed around with a bunch of naturopathic solutions that weren’t effective.  When he finally decided to take his doctors’ original advice, too much time had passed to save him.

 References/Sources:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericjackson/2013/01/22/the-ten-life-lessons-from-steve-jobs-we-should-never-forget/