The world's top 50 business thinkers

由 Des Dearlove 和 Stuart Crainer 所创办的知名研究与谘询机构 Crainer Dearlove 日前从 3,500 名受访者所得访问结果，并经由专家所组成的委员会评估后，推出 2009 年版「全球五十大思想家」（Thinkers 50）排行榜。其中，苹果公司创办人执行官 Steve Jobs 名列第四、微软创办人 Bill Gates 名列第七，是唯二进入排行榜前十名的科技人。点此查看完整Top50名单。

以下是排名第四的Steve Jobs生平介绍原文：

Steven Paul Jobs was born in San Francisco and brought up by his adopted parents in Santa Barbara. At an early age he developed an interest in computers, After dropping out of Reed College, a liberal arts college based in Portland Oregon, he went to India on a mission of self-discovery, returning with his head shaved.

In 1976 he set up Apple Computers with school-friend Steve Wozniak. Its first product, the Apple I, was a computer using an adapted television monitor as a visual interface. Jobs felt that the personal computer in everyone’s home had the potential to change the world.

On a visit to Xerox’s research facility at Palo Alto in 1979 Jobs was introduced to the concept of the GUI (Graphical User Interface) using a hand-held input device, better known to us today as a mouse. He used the idea for Apple’s LISA computer, together with ideas common to us all now, such as icons and a desktop. The LISA was unsuccessful but in 1984 Apple launched the Macintosh – its name supposedly inspired by a variety of apple. It too was initially less than successful. Their failure deepened the divisions between Jobs and the board of Apple, and in 1985 the two parted company. Jobs went on to found the NeXT Corp, manufacturers of computers with cutting-edge specifications but limited commercial success. He also became a major player in the entertainment industry.
In 1997 NeXT was taken over by Apple Inc., but rather than casting their errant founder to the wolves Jobs was appointed the company’s CEO. The computer industry had moved on a lot since Apple’s foundation. The home computer had changed the world, but it was not an Apple or Mac which dominated, but IBM clones running Microsoft software. Also the Internet was a fact of life.
The Apple Mac had carved out and jealously guarded a very important niche area. It remains the platform of choice for designers, desktop publishers and those working with sound; these are only a few of the areas where Apple still dominates and where Microsoft has only made very tenuous overtures.

Apple Inc. under Jobs has also launched products that have embedded themselves in the world of “superfast” communications. The first was the iPod, launched in 2000. This mobile storage device allowed users to carry ever larger numbers of audio files. These could be seamlessly downloaded from the Internet. There was no shortage of material to be enjoyed. It has become in a few years a standard for downloadable media, leading to a new word in the techie dictionary – podcast. Improvements in technology allowed files to contain video content and through innovative marketing the iPod became a “must have” accessory.

The iPhone, launched in June 2007, bundled the iPod with a camera ‘phone and an Internet-ready handset capable of mimicking a conventional telephone - only without a keyboard.

Jobs has always thought outside the box, even when this was considered weird. He doesn’t want to be just great but insanely great. This involves recruiting unconventional talent. It could be from historians, poets, artists even and other people who traditionally would be seen as too odd to have anything to contribute. For Jobs these are “great people” with “intriguing backgrounds” and “extraordinary taste” who have “exposed themselves to the best things humans have done and then brought those things into their projects.”

In 2007 Jobs was named amongst the world’s most powerful businessman by Fortune. But he challenges the success stereotype. He is one of the world’s most famous college drop-outs. While at college he studied calligraphy, which he claimed was seminal in the use of multiple typefaces and proportionally-spaced fonts by the Apple Mac.

He has never tried to shun his past. His experimentation with drugs in the 1970s is presented as an integral part of what he is today. Those who work with him must be open to alternative ways of looking at the world. It is the only way to understand some of his thinking.

Many of the members of the 1970s counter-culture have by now migrated into the mainstream, and some, like Jobs, have risen high into the hierarchy of corporate America. He is still able to enjoy both worlds. But counter-cultures are always with us; they are a market to satisfy. Jobs does nothing which would harm Apple’s appeal.

His company’s products bridge the gap between the rational world of science and the irrational world of aesthetics. The iMac aims to be eye-catching. It is as much (if not more) a fashion statement than a piece of technology.

Jobs still likes to exude the image of the philosopher-king among the anonymous gray of corporate management, as an enigma which may seem erratic, but which is always at the service of Apple Inc.

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