9) Proactive
One of the characteristics of a successful entrepreneur is proactive. The meaning of proactive can be defined as controlling a situation by making things happen or by preparing for possible future problems (Meriam-Webster, 2016). The other meaning by BusinessDictionary.com is the action and identification and exploitation of opportunities and in taking preemptory actions against potential problems and threats, whereas reactive behaviour focuses on fighting a fire or solving a problem after it occurs. The best example of an entrepreneur who has this characteristic is Steve Jobs who is a CEO and co-founder of Apple Inc. which had made a ring bell all over the world for the product of iPhone or iPad.
All over the world had been so crazy about the technology that can bring them towards the surprises. The revolution of the technology also had been improved a lot than before and could bring them towards the convenient when they need to communicate or give information to the others who are in another place or country. The best of technology that has been known well in the world is Apple Inc. which produces the product like iPhone, iPad, iPod and others electronic gadgets that had brought a lot of convenient to them. All the contribution that had brought for those gadgets is Steve Jobs, the Co-Founder of the Apple Inc. in the United State of America. He was an information technology entrepreneur and also an inventor.
Steve Jobs or the full name as Steve Paul Jobs was born on 24 February 1955 in San Francisco, California. His biological parents are Abdulfattah “John” Jandali who was born in the Muslim household and grew up in Homs, Syria and Joanne Schieble Simpson who is a speech therapist (Wikipedia, 2016). When he was an infant, he was adopted by two graduate students from the University of Wisconsin who called Clara and Paul Jobs. Clara was worked as an accountant and Paul Jobs was worked as a Coast Guard veteran and machinist. They were lived in Mountain View, California and now the place was well known as Silicon Valley.
Once he knew his father worked on electronics in the family garage, Paul showed to Jobs about how to take part in reconstruct the electronics and made him to more passion towards his hobby that instilled the confidence, tenacity, and mechanical prowess. Jobs was an intelligent and innovative thinker, his youth was riddled by the frustration about the formal schooling and was a prankster in elementary school. Due to the boredom, his fourth-grade teacher needed to bribe him to study. Afterwards, he tested so well but the administrators want to skip him to the high school. A few years later, he was successfully enrolled to a high school called Homestead High School in lately 1968 with Fernandez and at the same time, he was introduced to his partner who was Steve Wozniak who was attending in the University of California, Berkeley (Biography.com Editors, 2016).
Later in the years, Jobs enrolled at Reed College in Portland, Oregon which is an expensive college that could let Clara and Paul ill afford. With their son’s future, Clara and Paul had spent a lot of life-saving on his education in the college. Brennan who was a senior for Jobs when he was in the Homestead High School and also was supportive of Jobs when Jobs told her that he planned to drop the college as he doesn't want to waste his parents’ money even though they were just his adoptive parents. After he left the college, he used 18 months dropping in on creative classes at the school and they didn’t meet again until one day Jobs came and find her to live with him as he rented a house that near to the college. But, she refused it and he started to find other girls (Wikipedia, 2016).
After that, Job took a position as a video game designer and left the company for the reason to find the spiritual enlightenment in India in 1974. He travelled further and experimented with psychedelic drugs. In 1976, he started his journey with Steve Wozniak in organizing the Apple Computer and the funding for their entrepreneurial venture is by selling his Volkswagen bus and Wozniak sold his favourite scientific calculator. They credited with revolutionizing the computer industry by decorating the technology to become smaller, cheaper, easier to bring and can be accessed to every customer. The work by Wozniak was conceiving the user-friendly personal computer and the work for Jobs was marketing. The first computer sales were earned about $774,000 and the next product’s sales were higher than the first product that been conducted by them. Jobs looked to John Sculley of Pepsi-Cola to take over the Apple products. This had shown that the characteristic which is proactive had been shown through the type of he marketing his product to the market (Biography.com Editors, 2016).
Jobs had left the Apple Computer after few years as the next products’ sales was disappointed and Apple had to compete with an IBM/PC dominated the business world. Sculley believed that Jobs was hurting the Apple and the company’s executives began to chase him out. After he left the Apple in 1985, he began a new hardware and software enterprise called NeXT Inc. and also purchased an animation company called Pixar Animation Studio after he purchased it from George Lucas. Jobs had invested about $50 million in the company and produce the widely popular movies such as Toy Story, Nemo and so on. The studio merged with Walt Disney in 2006 and made Steve Jobs Disney’s largest shareholder. This had shown that Steve Jobs is controlling the situation by changing the field to the animation field and made him become a successful entrepreneur with the proactive characteristic (Biography.com Editors, 2016).
Jobs decided to sell the Pixar and NeXT Inc. specialized operating system to the mainstream America and the Apple eventually had bought the company and made Jobs turn back to Apple Inc. and be he CEO of the company in 1996. After that, Jobs instigated the success of the Apple in 1970’s and credited the company in 1990 with revitalizing the company. The altered stock option and self-imposed annual salary of $1 a year and Jobs put the Apple back on track with the new management team. His ingenious products such as iMac, effective branding campaigns, and stylish design had caught the attention of the consumers again in the market. This had shown that Jobs had fulfilled his wish and successful made the Apple back to the market and become the hot topic in the world, this showed that he had the characteristic of proactive when he was doing the project (Biography.com Editors, 2016).
As a conclusion, Steve Jobs’ characteristic of proactive had been shown in the way that he was in the entrepreneurial venture. With this characteristic had helped him to always be ready for the anything that he faces when something happened in the journey. So, from his story, we can notice that with the characteristic can know that Jobs is so proactive when he is facing the problem and try to prevent it happen again from the arising it is so important. Taking precaution and plans is so important for a succeed entrepreneur from avoiding it.
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