Apple must now begin the process of surviving as a company without Steve Jobs. It will be a daunting task, but one that should be made easier by the fact that Jobs himself left behind blueprints of sorts, for both the success of the company and for the executives that would follow him.Among those plans are outlines for products that Jobs believed would be part of the company’s future – plans he personally worked on for more than a year.Even though he was dying, Jobs worked tirelessly on Apple’s future. He worked hard to develop the plans for Apple’s futuristic headquarters in Cupertino, California, and get them approved, going so far as to defy doctors. Steve Jobs last public appearance was to pitch the spaceship-like designs to the Cupertino City Council last June.
Another secret project that Jobs worked on was an executive training program called Apple University. The program, which Jobs considered vital to Apple’s future success, will teach Apple executives to think like Steve Jobs. Sources familiar with the program say Jobs personally recruited the dean of Yale’s Business School, Joel Podolny, to develop it, way back in 2008.Steve Jobs oversaw the most incredible corporate turnaround in Silicon Valley history. After returning to Apple in 1997, he was in charge of every major decision Apple made, from the launch of iPod to the iPad 2.
In addition to the giant new Apple complex – which will sit on the old Hewlett Packard site (where Jobs worked part-time when he was 13 years old) – Jobs had also been supervising the development of iCloud, and contributing ideas to update the iPhone, iPad, MacBook and iPod. According to sources inside Apple, there are at least four years worth of new Apple products, thanks to Jobs.
