As the world mourns on the passing of Steve Jobs I thought I would put an industrial perspective on some of his accomplishments. Thomas Edison was credited with saying that genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. Without a doubt, Steve Jobs had tons of inspiration but there are likely many genius caliber personnel inside Apple that were able to implement Steve's ideas and concepts and turn them into reality.
I have been on many product launch teams involving cutting edge technologies and I can attest that it is not a simple thing. The products I was involved in were capital equipment type semiconductor testers and the instruments that went into them. These were high tech to be sure but the quantities at launch time were in the dozens not millions. In Apple's case, the innovative products often required new manufacturing techniques and ever smaller/thinner cases. Each product contained new components and everything had to be designed, tested, produced, acquired, and then manufactured in eye-popping quantities in order to have a successful launch. This truly required an army of talented engineers and programmers, as well as supply chain and manufacturing specialists. Each product upon release was under a huge public and analyst/critic microscope and therefore any product problem was magnified to an incredible degree. Despite this, most Apple product launches were very smooth and the demand for the Apple products was usually met in a timely manner.
So, in summary we have to give a lot of credit to Steve Jobs for his inspiration and contributions towards assembling the Apple team and culture but, we should also give credit to the unsung army of Apple's personnel and manufacturing partners for the work they have done making Steve's visions come true. As we say goodbye to Steve Jobs let us hope that the Apple team can continue to execute as they have in the past.
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