According to a survey by Edelman Trust Barometer in 2016, more than half of the world’s population couldn’t name a single CEO of any company.

The survey was conducted in 10 countries with 1,000 respondents in each, 200 college-educated adults. Most people cannot probably name the CEOs of the companies that made the products they use daily.

For example, not many people know the current CEO of Microsoft (not Bill Gates) or Ford Motor Company, Intel, Timex, Samsung, Calvin Klein, etc.

Just a handful of chief executive officers are easily recognizable; among those very few was the late co-founder of Pixar and Apple Inc., Steve Jobs.

More than just a leader of the largest company globally, Steve Jobs was often regarded as a visionary man who transformed the paradigm of personal computers and helped usher a significant shift in how people experienced mobile communications.

Steve Jobs died on October 5, 2011, from complications of pancreatic cancer. It has been a decade since then, yet people still wonder whether the world has unveiled the full scale of his legacy.

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10 /10 Over To Timothy D. Cook

Apple was 35 years old when Steve Jobs left the company for good. Jobs himself was 56 when finally pancreatic cancer took his life.

The death was announced by Apple, the company that Jobs and his friend Stephen Wozniak founded in 1976 in a garage in California.

He underwent a liver transplant in 2009 and took several medical leaves as Apple’s chief executive before stepping down in August 2011 and handing over his position to Timothy D. Cook, who remains as CEO of Apple now.

Just before Jobs died, he still was pretty much engaged in the company’s affairs.

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9 /10 A Chairman

In the resignation letter, Jobs said he was looking forward to witnessing and contributing to the company’s success as he believed Apple’s better, more innovative days were still ahead.

The resignation as CEO didn’t mean he immediately became no longer involved in the company activities.

He took the role of Apple’s chairman, although it proved to be a short tenure. Before that, the last time Apple had a formal chairman was in 1997.

Following his death in October, he was replaced in November by Arthur D. Levinson, who still is the Chairman of Apple today.



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8 /10 Private Life

Despite being such a high-profile CEO in his lifetime, Steve Jobs was exceedingly protective of his private life.

He married Laurene Powell in 1991 and had three children, including Eve, Reed, and Erin Sienna Jobs.

He also is survived by a daughter, Lisa Brennan, from his previous relationship with Chrisann Brennan.

As an adult, he discovered that he had a biological sister, novelist Mona Simpson.

He also managed to find and make contacts with his biological mother after the death of his adoptive one. Jobs had met with his biological father at a restaurant, not knowing they were related.

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7 /10 High Profile Tributes

Tributes flowed quickly following the news of his death, in both formal statements and social network posts.

From average Twitter users to technology leaders and even President Barrack Obama said few words about the man.

Microsoft co-founder and a long-time business partner/competitor Bill Gates said it had been an insanely great honor for those lucky enough to have worked with Jobs.

President Obama told the world that Jobs had been among the greatest inventors who exemplified American ingenuity. One Twitter user posted touching words saying that Jobs had made the technology world beautiful.

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6 /10 Massive Comeback

Just about five years after Apple established itself in the market, Jobs led a team that would eventually come up with Macintosh. He left the company in 1985 following a conflict with the then CEO John Sculley.

During the separation, Jobs shifted to focus on NeXT, which was later acquired by Apple, and Pixar, now a subsidiary of Disney.

When Jobs returned to Apple 12 years later, he oversaw three products to bring Apple back on the map: the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad. All three changed the face of the industry as a whole.

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5 /10 Effective Executive Style

It is no secret that Steve Jobs was neither a hardware engineer nor a computer programmer.

He made it clear to everyone that his role as a leader included choosing the best people for whatever project was ahead and encouraging everyone to exceed expectations.

As a leader, however, he had the final say on the product design. Throughout his years as CEO of Apple, Jobs was not known as particularly friendly.

He liked to meddle in tiny details and throw some caustic, even humiliating criticisms. But in the end, such an executive style worked well.

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4 /10 Only The Future

Whether he had already known that he was coming back in 1985 or that he didn’t care, Jobs didn’t clear out all his personal belongings from his office.

Seemingly important objects (including his first Apple stock certificate) were ultimately thrown away.

Shortly after returning in the late 1990s, Jobs decided to send the company’s historical archive – among the documents were Apple management records – to Stanford University Libraries.

As it turned out, he wanted to create a culture where the company focused only on the future and what could happen instead of the past and what could have been.

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3 /10 Apple, Not Disney

That perspective also was made clear in the biography “Becoming Steve Jobs” authored by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli.

According to Tim Cook, the current CEO of Apple, his predecessor found it disgusting how Disney culture had not seen much of a change since the death of Walt Disney.

Even in life, he pointed out that after his death, he didn’t want anybody at Apple to ask what Steve Jobs would do in any situation.

Before the new Apple Campus was completed, Jobs had asked not to name the facility after him. It was called Apple Park.

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2 /10 Inevitably Obsolete

His fixation with the future somehow made him realize that all the products he designed would eventually become obsolete shortly.

In an interview in 1994 (Jobs was 36 back then), he said it would happen when he reached 50 years of age.

Perhaps he was thinking about older devices like calculators, film cameras, the Nintendo, overhead projectors, and maybe printed encyclopedia.

Technically he was right, although newer technology products such as smartphones and portable digital audio players still follow the design lines of the first iPhone and iPod.

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1 /10 Personal Computer

Steve Jobs came to the scene when the world still essentially saw computers as laboratory equipment meant to be used only by professionals.

Although some had penetrated the home-users market, computers were expensive.

Jobs made everyone know that computers could do many things other than solve math problems and calculate accounting solutions. Despite the sophistication, computers could be fun and empowering.

The way how people used computers and smartphones today is, to some extent, triggered by product design ideas Steve Jobs had decades ago.

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