5 CEOs Who Think Like Steve Jobs

Apple Inc is a success story. The company currently wears the crown of the share market, and is the talk of Wall Street. The one man responsible for what Apple is today is undoubtedly the charismatic Steve Jobs. Jobs had ability to create value for shareholders and employees, and to define their industry to both competitors and consumers alike. His focus was on a long-term vision that trumps the quarterly drumbeat of the Wall Street yet. There was his shrewd use of capital to grow his company and to cripple competitors. And above all, there was his desire to connect completely with customers so his product would almost sell itself. If you think, all these awe inspiring characteristics are sole Steve Job stuff, then think again. There are five CEOs who will remind you of Jobs the way they think and carry out themselves, read on to know these CEOs as compiled by Market Watch.

#1 JAMES SINEGAL, COSTCO

James Sinegal is co-founder and former CEO of Costco, an international retail chain. Sinegal like Jobs was innovative business builder, a guy with a long-term focus on shareholder value and connecting with consumers in new ways. Sinegal co-founded Costco and has been president since 1983. It is his innovations that made Costco the first warehouse club to include fresh food, eye-care clinics, pharmacies, gas stations and other businesses previously thought out of place on retail floors. Shares of Costco are up 2,800 percent and have paid modest dividends since 2004, all credits to Sinegal. Something which places both Jobs and Sinegal in same league is Sinegal’s desire to put “user experience” above everything else. Being in retailer business, where customer satisfaction is a priority and which in turn cannot be achieved unless the employees are happy, and motivated. About four out of every five Costco workers get health care and benefits, even though about half are part-timers. The average wage is $19 an hour, and there have been no layoffs in the recession. And there is one more category where Sinegal can be considered a step ahead of Jobs, while Jobs outsourced work to Asia, Sinegal managed to create an industry leader that offers livable wages to almost 150,000 Americans.

                                                                                              

#2 JOHN C. MARTIN, GILEAD SCIENCES

Gilead Sciences is an American biotechnology company that discovers, develops and commercializes therapeutics. The company’s CEO John C. Martin has been the brains behind one of the fastest-growing drug stocks on Wall Street since taking over in 1996. The stock is up about 2,700% in those 15 years.He, like Jobs was credited with well doing of the company, and like Jobs Martin understood how to take calculated risks and use capital responsibly to grow and squeeze out competitors. After riding high due to successful antiviral medications including flu vaccines, in 2006 Gilead made quality acquisitions to enter into the profitable cardiovascular and respiratory markets.The company is currently into HIV research, and if it succeeds, it too can make a product which will bring revolution in medical world like iPhone brought in consumer electronics world.

3 LARRY PAGE, GOOGLE

Larry Page is an American computer scientist and Internet entrepreneur who, with Sergey Brin, co-founded Google. On April 4, 2011, he took on the role of chief executive officer of Google.As the company’s mission statement goes “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,” which is all about considering customer satisfaction as priority which was same with Apple.If Apple’s iOS can give a run for money, so does Android, and this mobile platform is now the world’s widely used mobile OS. Like Apple whose products iPhone, iPad and iPod have utter dominance in their category, Google has the utter dominance in its products like Google Maps, Google Ads and, of course, Google search.

#4 JIM SKINNER, MCDONALD’S

James Alan Skinner is an American business executive. He was the Vice Chairman and CEO of McDonald's Corporation.Skinner began his career with the food chain as a lowly restaurant manager trainee in Illinois about 40 years ago, and was not a founder, unlike Jobs who was the founder of Apple. But like Jobs, he was called upon to revitalize McDonald’s.McDonald’s price in 2000 to 2003 was plummeted from a high above $33 to around $13. The company was struggling under many negative perceptions — unhealthy food and poor working conditions among them. But thanks to Skinner who was named CEO in 2004, McDonald’s stock is now at about $87 per share and is considered as a healthy food chain too.In his efforts to revitalize the company, his main plan is to refocus on the customer. The menu got healthy. The Dollar Menu was added. The 24-hour drive-through window, the McCafe line of coffee, Wi-Fi access points and the first major store redesign since in 1970s was designed to win back customer loyalty. And it worked big-time.

#5 JEFF BEZOS, AMAZON.COM

Jeffrey Preston "Jeff" Bezos is an American entrepreneur who played a key role in the growth of e-commerce as the founder and CEO of Amazon.com, an online merchant of books and later of a wide variety of products. Under his guidance, Amazon.com became the largest retailer on the World Wide Web and the model for Internet sales.He is single handedly responsible for the growth of company’s shares, up about 12,700 percent since 1997. Amazon was the first true e-commerce success story. Now people talk  Amazon’s Kindle Fire as an iPad competitor, but the matter of the fact is, original Kindle arrived in 2007, just a few months after the iPhone was born and while viability of “e-books” still was uncertain.According to comScore, an Internet analytics company, in June 2011 Amazon was visited by 282 million people, or we can put it like-- 20.4 percent of the world’s online population.