Steve Jobs and the entrepreneurial spirit

Even as the country reeled from the devastation wrought by typhoons Pedring and Quiel, Filipinos joined millions abroad in mourning the death of a legend.

Steven Paul Jobs passed away in his California home. Few men of his caliber had the vision and drive to change the world like he did.

US President Barack Obama summed up Jobs’s impact when he said that news of his death was spread worldwide by the very devices that he helped create—the iPhone and the iPad.

Microsoft’s Bill Gates paid tribute to a contemporary, saying it was “an insanely great honor” to work with the man who was being compared to American inventor Thomas Edison and industrial leaders like Henry Ford and the late Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton.

Most Filipinos can’t afford the cost of an iPhone or an iPad, but the digital world has changed lifestyles and economic arenas, not to mention the landscape of markets and minds.

In comment sections in several websites, not a few Filipinos wondered if Jobs would have succeeded if he lived in the Philippines, where poverty and corruption thrive like weeds.

Probably not but Jobs was more than just an American success story.

Adversity didn’t stop him. His mother put him up for adoption as a baby. He was a college dropout.

But his dreams were bigger than his limitations.

He decided with his friend Steve Wozniak to make a machine that would bring computers outside large, air-conditioned rooms and into the comfort of one’s home.

Even after being kicked out of his own company, Jobs never gave up. He founded another company which Apple bought a few years later, paving the way for his return. Back in his turf, he introduced more innovations not only in personal computers, but also music players, cell phones, digital entertainment and even an animation studio.

The list of accolades go on and on, but the traits that served him well in his ascent to greatness are not alien to Filipinos, especially Cebuano entrepreneurs who strive with whatever limited resources and personnel they have to achieve their own success.

It is Jobs’ merging of technological expertise and creativity and his insistence on delivering technology closer to the people that are the qualities which every entrepreneur should emulate, beyond meeting the corporate bottom line.

In Jobs’ words, people should follow their heart and intuition and not let other people’s voices drown out their own.

“Stay hungry and stay foolish,” he said.

May we all live the wisdom behind such words.