Tuesday October 11: Use the Best of (Steve) Jobs To Restore Economy

By Sylvia Gurinsky

Steve Jobs was a great American creator, but not a perfect one. As a boss, he could be tyrannical. His all-American Apple products are made in China.

Still, he was a visionary and put ideas into practice that American business could sure use right now.

Imagination and creativity are sorely lacking in the executives who are still thinking quarter by quarter and still laying off reliable employees by the thousands. Those executives are a major reason for the "Occupy Wall Street" protests springing up across the country.

Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak began building the Apple I computer in 1975 - a time when the United States was just beginning to emerge from a crippling recession. They founded the Apple company in 1976. Many entrepreneurs have been inspired to create new companies during national economic crises.

Jobs endured failure, being forced from Apple during the 1980s. He began again, first with Disney Pixar, which has made films such as the "Toy Story" series and "Monsters, Inc."

He reclaimed his mantle at Apple during the 1990s and introduced the slender, multicolored Macbook.

Then, he faced mortality in 2004 with a cancer diagnosis. What followed was probably his greatest creative period since his design of the early Apple computers, with the creation of the iPod, iPhone and iPad.

The result: Apple has been doing very well in a very bad economy.

In the wake of Jobs' death, lots of people have referred to his 2005 speech at Stanford University's graduation ceremonies. It is most relevant for how to get out of today's crisis:

"Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become."