Prof Denise Thomp­son, of the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T's (UTT) Cen­tre for Pro­duc­tion Sys­tems, says the late in­no­va­tor ex­tra­or­di­naire/glob­al leader Steve Jobs, was dri­ven by four out­stand­ing at­trib­ut­es: de­sign, ac­cess, ex­e­cu­tion and val­ue. She made this com­ment dur­ing a Busi­ness and Stu­dents' Fo­rum on the life and lega­cy of Jobs host­ed, which the UTT host­ed at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA), Keate Street, Port-of-Spain, last week Wednes­day. Thomp­son said: "De­sign was at the heart of Jobs' vi­sion-the big pic­ture of what he was reach­ing for. Good de­sign is clean and sim­ple and must en­hance the cus­tomer's ex­pe­ri­ence.

Jobs en­vi­sioned main­frames be­com­ing per­son­al com­put­ers. The PCs were con­nect­ed to each oth­er and liv­ing in net­works. She not­ed: "His 'post-PC world'-a vi­sion of dai­ly life-is en­abled by and de­pend­ing on smart­phones, tablets and small, mo­bile, easy-to-use com­put­ers that en­able and fa­cil­i­tate con­sump­tion of mu­sic, books, games and shows." "He nev­er did it for mon­ey. His 2010 com­pen­sa­tion pack­age was US$1. It was about wow­ing in­vestors from US$9 to US$454 per share, in­spir­ing oth­ers, be­ing a vi­sion­ary. It was about forc­ing oth­er cor­po­rate gi­ants to be in­no­v­a­tive, prov­ing that cor­po­rate turn­arounds can be pos­si­ble."

Ap­ple un­veiled rev­o­lu­tion­ary prod­ucts-the iMac, Mac OS X, iTunes, the iPod and iPad. "When Jobs re­turned in 1997, Ap­ple Shares were be­ing trad­ed for bare­ly a cou­ple dol­lars. To­day, Ap­ple Stock hov­ers around US$380 a share, and re­cent­ly shot past US$400, briefly mak­ing Ap­ple the most valu­able brand and com­pa­ny in the world."

Michelle Loubon