Yes, you read that correctly – Apple [former and present] CEO Steve Jobs is highlighted by Fortune as CEO of the Decade, citing his role in remaking multiple industries and his recent continued success with Allpe albid the recent economic situation.
Fortune profiles Jobs as having an “outsize[d] impact on everything he touches.” Readers can browse through the ups and downs of Job’s last 10 years via a cool (surely Mac generated) interactive map: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/steve_jobs/2009/timeline.html
Humorously, the feature begins with a “believe-it-or-not” lead:
How's this for a gripping corporate story line: Youthful founder gets booted from his company in the 1980s, returns in the 1990s, and in the following decade survives two brushes with death, one securities-law scandal, an also-ran product lineup, and his own often unpleasant demeanor to become the dominant personality in four distinct industries, a billionaire many times over, and CEO of the most valuable company in Silicon Valley.
Fortune also includes a scrapbook of rare photos of Jobs (several shown here) and testimonials from 8 relevant colleagues telling of his uniqueness.
At age 21, in 1976, Steve Jobs co-founded Apple with Steve Wozniak in Jobs' family garage in Los Altos, Calif. Jobs' father removed his car restoration equipment and brought home a wooden workbench that served as Apple's first manufacturing base. Jobs returned to the empty garage in 1996 to be photographed for Fortune.
Jobs with Steve Wozniak in 1979, posing for Life magazine with the Apple II, Apple's first breakthrough product.
Jobs and Apple CEO John Sculley sit on a Central Park bench in 1984 with the Macintosh under wraps in its case. A year later, Jobs was ousted from Apple. He later launched a computer company called Next, where he stayed for 12 years before returning to Apple in 1997. Scully remained CEO of Apple until 1993.
