Biography of Azim Premji

Business expansion

When Azim Premji took over as its head, Wipro dealt in hydrogenated cooking fats and later diversified to bakery fats, ethnic ingredient based toiletries, hair care soaps, baby toiletries, lighting products, and hydraulic cylinders. Thereafter Premji made a focused shift from soaps to software. The Amalner-based vanaspathi manufacturing company, the Western India Products later became Wipro Products Ltd and Wipro Limited subsequently. Under Premji’s leadership Wipro embarked on an ambitious phase of expansion and diversification. The Company began manufacturing light bulbs with and other consumer products including soaps, baby care products, shampoos, powder etc.

In the 1980s Wipro entered the IT field, taking advantage of the exit of IBM from the Indian market in 1975. Thus, Wipro started manufacturing computer hardware, software development and related items, under a special license from Sentinel. As a result, the $1.5 million company in hydrogenated cooking fats grew within a few decades to an over $6 billion diversified, integrated corporation in services, medical systems, technology products and consumer items with offices worldwide. The company’s IT division became the world's first to win SEI CMM level 5 and PCMM Level 5 (People Capability Maturity Model) certification, the latest in quality standards. A large percentage of the company’s revenues are generated by the IT division. Wipro works with leading Fortune 500 companies. Wipro also has a joint venture in Medical Systems with General Electric company.

Wipro Consumer Care launched brands like Santoor and the Wipro Shikakai in 1986; Santoor Talc and Wipro Baby Soft in 1991; Santoor Facewash, Wipro Sanjeevani Honey andWipro Safewash in 2004; Santoor Handwash in 2006; Wipro Sweet 'n' Healthy and Chandrika Handwash in 2007 and Santoor Deo in 2010.

Wipro Consumer Care acquired brands like Glucovita in 2003; Chandrika in 2004; North West in 2006; Unza in 2007; Enchanteurand Romano in 2008 and Yardley in 2009 andAramusk in 2011.

Azim Premji founded Wipro Lighting and Wipro GE Medical Systems in 1991; Wipro Net in 1999; netKracker in 2000; Wipro Water in 2008; and Wipro EcoEnergy in 2009.

Family

Azim Premji is married to Yasmeen.The couple have two children, Rishad and Tariq. Rishad is married to Aditi and is currently the Chief Strategy Officer of IT Business, Wipro.

Honours and awards

Premji is known for his modesty and frugality in spite of his wealth. Also, for his integrity as he doesn't give or take bribes and his company as a no tolerance policy on bribery.

Premji has been recognized by Business Week as one of the Greatest Entrepreneurs for being responsible for Wipro emerging as one of the world’s fastest growing companies.

In 2000, he was conferred an honorary doctorate by the Manipal Academy of Higher Education.

In 2006, Azim Premji was awared Lakshya Business Visionary by National Institute of Industrial Engineering, Mumbai.

He was awarded a Doctor of Literature (D.Litt.), an honorary degree, from the Aligarh Muslim University on the 18th of June, 2008 on the occasion of 58th Convocation Ceremony of the University.

In 2009, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut for his outstanding philanthropic work. In 2005 the government of India honored him with the title of Padma Bhushan for his outstanding work in trade and commerce.

In 2011, he has been awarded Padma Vibhushan, the second highest civilian award by the Government of India.

Wipro Equity Reward Trust

In 1984, Azim Premji established the Wipro Equity Reward Trust to allow employees to acquire stake in Wipro's success and growth. The WERT, which is administered by a Board of Trustees is designed to give eligible employees the right to receive restricted shares and other compensation benefits at the stipulated times and conditions. Such compensation benefits include voluntary contributions, loans, interest and dividends on investments in the WERT and other similar benefits. Shares from the WERT are issued in the joint names of the WERT and the employee until such restrictions and obligations are fulfilled by the employee. After a four-year period, complete ownership of the shares is transferred to the employee.

If employment is terminated by death, disability or retirement, his or her restricted shares are transferred to the employee’s legal heirs or continue to be held by the employee, as the case may be, and such individuals may exercise any rights to those shares for up to 90 days after employment has ceased.

Azim Premji Foundation and University

In 2001, he founded Azim Premji Foundation, a not-for profit organization, with a vision to significantly contribute to achieving quality universal education that facilitates a just, equitable, humane and sustainable society The Foundation works in the area of elementary education to pilot and develop 'proofs of concept' that have a potential for systemic change in India's 1.3 million government-run schools. A specific focus is on working in rural areas where the majority of these schools exist. This choice to work with elementary education (Class I to VIII) in rural government-run is a response to evidence of educational attainment in India. In December 2010, Premji pledged to donate $2 billion for improving school education in India. This has been done by transferring 213 million equity shares of Wipro Ltd, held by a few entities controlled by him, to the Azim Premji Trust.This donation is the largest of its kind by any Indian billionaire. The Azim Premji University was established under the Azim Premji University Act 2010 of the Government of Karnataka to award degrees in teacher training.Azim Premji University will create new courses to develop education and development professionals, offer alternative models for educational change and also invest in educational research to continuously stretch the boundaries of educational thinking.

Biography of Lakshmi Mittal

Early life and education

Lakshmi Narayan Mittal alias Lakshmi Niwas Mittal was born into a Marwari business family in Churu district of Rajasthan, India. His family moved from (Rajgarh)Sadulpur, Rajasthan to Calcutta in West Bengal. He graduated from St. Xavier's College, Calcutta where he graduated with a Bachelor of Commerce degree in business and accounting with first class. He has two siblings (brothers) named Pramod Mittal and Vinod Mittal. His father, Mohan Lal Mittal, ran a steel business, Nippon Denro Ispat. Until the 1990s, the family's main assets in India were a cold-rolling mill for sheet steels in Nagpur and an alloy steels plant near Pune. Today, the family business, including a large integrated steel plant near Mumbai, is run by Lakshmi's brothers, Pramod and Vinod, but Lakshmi has no connection with it.

Mittal started his career working in the family's steel making business in India, and in 1976, when the family founded its own steel business, he set out to establish its international division, beginning with the buying of a run-down plant in Indonesia. Shortly afterwards he married Usha, the daughter of a well-to-do moneylender. In 1976, due to differences with his father, mother and brothers,branched out on his the LNM Group, and he has been responsible for the development of its businesses ever since. Mittal Steel is a global steel producer with operations in 14 countries.

Mittal pioneered the development of integrated mini-mills and the use of direct reduced iron or "DRI" as a scrap substitute for steelmaking and led the consolidation process of the global steel industry. Mittal Steel is the largest steelmaker in the world, with shipments of 42.1 million tons of steel and profits of over $22 billion in 2004.

Philanthropy

After witnessing India win only one medal, bronze, in the 2000 Summer Olympics, and one medal, silver, at the 2004 Summer Olympics, Mittal decided to set up Mittal Champions Trust with US$9 million to support 10 Indian athletes with world-beating potential. In 2008, Mittal awarded Abhinav Bindra with Rs. 1.5 Crore (Rs. 15 million), for getting India its first individual Olympic gold medal in shooting.

For Comic Relief 2007, he matched the money raised (~£1 million) on the celebrity special BBC programme, The Apprentice.

ArcelorMittal also has a very active CSR program under which it sets out its path to produce Safe Sustainable Steel. The company also operates the ArcelorMittal Foundation, which provides support to many different community projects around the world in the countries where ArcelorMittal operates.

India: University education formation

In 2002, Lakshmi Niwas Mittal and Usha Mittal foundation and the Government of Rajasthan partnered together to establish a university named the LNM Institute of Information Technology (LNMIIT) inJaipur as an autonomous non-profit organization. The university will provide quality education having research focus, so that students graduating out of the Institute can make significant contributions to the industries and society.

Criticism and allegations

PHS

Lakshmi Mittal successfully employed Marek Dochnal's consultancy to influence Polish officials in the privatization of PHS steel group, which was Poland's largest. Dochnal was later arrested for bribing Polish officials on behalf of Russian agents in a separate affair.

In 2007, Polish government said it wants to renegotiate the 2004 sale to Arcelor Mittal.

Slave-labour allegations and abhorrent safety records

Employees of Mittal have accused him of "slave labour" conditions after multiple fatalities in his mines.During December 2004, twenty-three miners died in explosions in his mines in Kazakhstancaused by faulty gas detectors.

Mr. Mittal has been accused of running a series of coal mines in Kazakhstan with abhorrent safety records. Between 2004 and 2007, the lax standards were responsible for the deaths of 91 coalminers and the subject of a criminal investigation. Witnesses to a 2006 explosion, which claimed the lives of 41 people, maintain that, despite the plumes of flammable gas, managers at the mines pushed the employees to work so that they could meet their production as well as other targets. One employee even told the Times, "The pressures local managers put us under to meet targets so that they can collect their bonuses are more and more stressful. We are being exploited like animals." Former miner turned trade unionist Pavel Shumkin even claimed, "The miners all agree: compared with life now under Mittal, for them everything was better in Soviet times."

The Mittal Affair: "Cash for Influence"

Main article: Mittal Affair

Controversy erupted in 2002 as Plaid Cymru MP Adam Price exposed the link between UK prime minister Tony Blair and Mittal in the Mittal Affair, also known as 'Garbagegate' or Cash for Influence. Mittal's LNM steel company, registered in the Dutch Antilles and maintaining less than 1% of its 100,000 plus workforce in the UK, sought Blair's aid in its bid to purchaseRomania's state steel industry. The letter from Blair to the Romanian government, a copy of which Price was able to obtain, hinted that the privatisation of the firm and sale to Mittal might help smooth the way for Romania's entry into the European Union.

The letter had a passage in it removed just prior to Blair's signing of it, describing Mittal as "a friend."

Queens Park Rangers

Recently, Mittal had emerged as a leading contender to buy and sell Barclays Premiership clubs Wigan and Everton. However on 20 December 2007 it was announced that the Mittal family had purchased a 20 per cent shareholding in Queens Park Rangers football club joining Flavio Briatore and Mittal's friend Bernie Ecclestone. As part of the investment Mittal's son-in-law, Amit Bhatia, took a place on the board of directors. The combined investment in the struggling club sparked suggestions that Mittal might be looking to join the growing ranks of wealthy individuals investing heavily in English football and emulating other similar benefactors such as Roman Abramovich.

On 19 February 2010, Flavio Briatore resigned as QPR chairman, and sold further shares in the club to Ecclestone, making Ecclestone the single largest shareholder.

Personal life

Mittal purchased the Irish Steel plant based in Cork from the government for a nominal fee of £1 m. Three years later in 2001, it was closed, leaving 400 people redundant. Subsequent environmental issues at the site have been a cause for criticism. The Government tried to sue in the High Court to have him pay for the clean-up of Cork Harbour but failed. The clean up was expected to cost €70m.^[27]

His residence at 18-19 Kensington Palace Gardens--which was purchased from Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone in 2004 for £57 million (US$128 million)--made it the world's most expensive house at the time. Mittal's house in Kensington, London is decorated with marble taken from the same quarry that supplied the Taj Mahal. The extravagant show of wealth has been referred to as the "Taj Mittal". It has 12 bedrooms, an indoor pool, Turkish baths and parking for 20 cars.

Mittal bought No. 6 Palace Greens, Kensington Gardens, formerly owned by financier Noam Gottesman, at £117 million for his son Aditya Mittal who is married to Megha Mittal, owner and director of the Board of the German fashion luxury brand Escada.

Mittal bought No. 9A Palace Greens, Kensington Gardens, formerly the British Philippines embassy, at £70 million in 2008 for his daughter Vanisha Mittal Bhatia Bhatia who is married to Amit Bhatia a businessman and a philanthropist.

Mittal owns three prime properties collectively worth £500 million on the "Billionaire's Row" at Kensington Palace Gardens.

Mittal also owns another London home at 46B, The Bishops Avenue called the Summer Palace. It's dubbed as "Millionaires Row" and is reportedly for sale at £40 million.

Mittal also owns a 5,500 sq ft penthouse apartment at 148-150 Old Park Lane London, just above Hard Rock Cafe which he purchased for £7 million in July 2002 from Lord Alan Sugar.

In 2005, he also bought a colonial bungalow for $30 million at No. 22, Aurangzeb Road in New Delhi, India, the most exclusive street in the city occupied by embassies and millionaires, and rebuilt it as a house.

In January 2011, Lakshmi Mittal bought a luxury home in Scotland. Mittal has knocked down a £4 million property to build his new home, valued at around £15 million, making it Scotland’s most expensive home. The Mittal mansion is coming up in one of the most elite neighborhoods, right near the Gleneagles golf course in Perthshire County. This luxury villa has six bedrooms and two kitchens. The wallpaper and furniture are from Ralph Lauren’s home collection. The wooden flooring and tiles were imported from Germany and a luxury bathroom is estimated to be worth £80,000.

Mittal is now planning to build a "Zero Carbon" footprint estate in Surrey, a 340-acre estate also called Alderbrook Park which was built as a country estate during the 19th century but was part-demolished in the 1950s and replaced with a less-attractive home. He purchased the estate for £5.25 million and is planning to spend £25 million on it to make it 100 per cent self-sufficient and eco-friendly. The unique modern design will not only ensure the house is zero-carbon, but will make the entire 340-acre estate carbon negative. The house will be built on a stone plinth, which will provide various terraces on which to enjoy the cocktail hour. It will have at least 10 bedrooms, outdoor and indoor swimming pools, a fitness centre, an under-ground art gallery, tennis courts, sculpture garden, an arboretum and croquet lawn.

Biography of Bill Gates

Bill Gates came from a family of entrepreneurship and high-spirited liveliness. William Henry Gates III was born in Seattle, Washington on October 28th, 1955. His father, William H. Gates II, is a Seattle attorney. His late mother, Mary Gates, was a schoolteacher, University of Washington regent, and chairwoman of United Way International.

Bill Gates - Early Life

He had an early interest in software and began programming computers at the age of thirteen. In 1973, Bill Gates became a student at Harvard University, where he meet Steve Ballmer (now Microsoft's chief executive officer). While still a Harvard undergraduate, Bill Gates wrote a version of the programming language BASIC for the MITS Altair microcomputer.

Did you know that as young teenagers Bill Gates and Paul Allen ran a small company called Traf-O-Data and sold a computer to the city of Seattle that could count city traffic?

Bill Gates & Microsoft

In 1975, before graduation Gates left Harvard to form Microsoft with his childhood friend Paul Allen. The pair planned to develop software for the newly emerging personal computer market.

Bill Gate's company Microsoft became famous for their computer operating systems and killer business deals. For example, Bill Gates talked IBM into letting Microsoft retain the licensing rights to MS-DOS an operating system, that IBM needed for their new personal computer. Gates proceeded to make a fortune from the licensing of MS-DOS.

On November 10, 1983, at the Plaza Hotel in New York City, Microsoft Corporation formally announced Microsoft Windows, a next-generation operating system.

On January 1, 1994, Bill Gates married Melinda French Gates. They have three children.

Bill Gates Philanthropist

Bill Gates and his wife, Melinda, have endowed the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation with more than $28.8 billion (as of January 2005) to support philanthropic initiatives in the areas of global health and learning.

·         MS DOS The Operating System History

From a Quick and Dirty Operating System a giant walks (ms-dos), in 1980, IBM first approached Bill Gates and Microsoft, to discuss the state of home computers and Microsoft products.

·         Windows 1.0 To Windows Beyond 2000

Windows is the graphical user interface for IBM and IBM compatible machines, this article discusses the origins of Windows and where Windows is heading.

Biography of Warren Buffett

WARREN BUFFET Early Life

Businessman and investor. Born Warren Edward Buffett on August 30,1930, in Omaha, Nebraska. Buffett's father Howard worked as stockbroker and served as U.S. Congressman. His mother, Leila Stahl Buffett, was a homemaker. Buffett was the second of three children and the only boy. Buffett demonstrated a knack for financial and business matters early on in his childhood. Friends and acquaintances have said the young boy was a mathematical prodigy, and was able to add large columns of numbers in his head-a talent he still occasionally shows off to friends and business associates.Warren often visited his father's stockbrokerage shop as a child, and chalked in the stock prices on the blackboard in the office. At 11 years old he made his first investment; he bought three shares of Cities Service Preferred at $38 per share. The stock quickly dropped to only $27, but Buffett held on tenaciously until they reached $40. He sold his shares at a small profit, but regretted the decision when Cities Service shot up to nearly $200 a share. He later cited this experience as an early lesson in patience in investing.

First Entrepreneurial Venture

By the age of 13, Buffett was running his own businesses as a paperboy and selling his own horseracing tip sheet. That same year, he filed his first tax return, claiming his bike as a $35 tax deduction.In 1942, Buffett's father was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, and his family moved to Fredricksburg, Virginia, to be closer to the congressman's new post. Buffett attended Woodrow Wilson High School in Washington, D.C., where he continued plotting new ways to make money. During his high school tenure, he and a friend purchased a used pinball machine for $25. They installed it in a Washington, D.C. barbershop and, within a few months, the profits of the machine allowed Buffett and his friend to buy other machines. Buffett owned three machines in three different locations before he sold the business to a War Veteran for $1,200.

Higher Education

Buffett enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania at the age of 16 to study business. He stayed two years, moved to the University of Nebraska to finish up his degree, and emerged from college at age 20 with nearly $10,000 from his childhood businesses. Buffett attended Columbia University for his advanced degree and in 1956, shortly after graduation, he formed the firm Buffett Partnership in his hometown of Omaha. His Investment successes, particularly in buying undervalued companies whose stocks shortly began to rise, made him extremely rich and gained him the sobriquet, "Oracle of Omaha." Other notable career succeses include helping rescue Salomon Brothers from corporate raiders (1987) and taking charge of the New York City house (1992) in the wake of an insider trading scandal.

Record-Breaking Donation

In June 2006, Buffett made an announcement that he would be giving his entire fortune away to charity, committing 85 percent of it to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This donation became the largest act of charitable giving in United States history.The majority of Buffett's considerable fortune was amassed through Berkshire Hathaway, a company for which he is the largest shareholder and CEO. Ranked as Forbes' wealthiest man in 2008, his net worth is estimated at more than $62 billion.

Biography of Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs’ Early Life

Born in San Francisco in 1955, Jobs was was adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs of Santa Clara, Calif. Jobs attended high school in Cupertino, Calif., the city where Apple is based. In 1972, he briefly attended Reed College in Portland, Ore., but dropped out after a semester. Jobs returned to California in 1974 and landed a job with Atari, where his friend and eventual business partner Steve Wozniak also worked.

Apple – Rise and Eventual Ouster

Jobs co-founded Apple, then known as Apple Computer, with Steve Wozniak to provide a circuit board for hobbyists who built their own computers. Despite that homebrew beginning, Apple helped usher in the age of the personal computer with the introduction of the Apple II line in 1976. Those machines soon gave way to a revolutionary change in desktop computing – the Macintosh. The Mac OS was the first commercially available and widely embraced system to use the graphical user interface that is common today and a mouse for interacting with the icons on the screen. The Mac was a giant success and rocketed Jobs and Apple into position as one of the world’s most important computer companies. The company made a huge splash with its 1984 Super Bowl commercial that introduced that Macintosh, which played on George Orwell’s novel 1984 and positioned IBM as Big Brother, while Apple represented heroic rebels struggling for freedom. By that time, Jobs had lured John Sculley, an experienced executive, away from PepsiCo to be Apple’s CEO. But, in 1985, amid a sales slump, Jobs lost a corporate power struggle to Sculley and the company’s board of directors, and left Apple.

NeXT – A New Challenge

Upon leaving Apple, Jobs founded NeXT Computer, a computer company that took the graphical lessons learned from the success of the Mac and married them to the computing power of Unix. The stylish and technologically advanced, but expensive, NeXT computers never caught on in the way that the Apple II or Mac lines did, though NeXT maintained a steady business from 1985-1997. And, come 1997, NeXT would take on a new, and much more central role -- at Apple.

Pixar – A Hobby Becomes a Powerhouse

While at NeXT, Jobs purchased a computer graphics division of Lucasfilm Ltd. in 1986 for $10 million. That division became Pixar Animation Studios, with Jobs as its CEO and majority shareholder.Though originally intended as a computer hardware company aiming high-end machines at Hollywood, when that business failed to take off, the company transformed into a maker of animated movies with a contract with Disney. Under Jobs’ leadership, Pixar became a dominant movie-making force in Hollywood, churning out a string of smash hits, including Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, and Wall-E, among others.In 2006, Jobs engineered the sale of Pixar to the Walt Disney Co., a deal which landed him a spot on Disney’s board and made him the company’s largest individual shareholder. After the conclusion of that deal, Fortune Magazine named Jobs its Most Powerful Businessman of 2007

The Return to Apple - Triumph

Jobs earned that title not only due to his role at Disney but also because, by that time, he had returned to Apple as its Chairman and CEO.In late 1996, Jobs had overseen the sale of NeXT to Apple and returned to a leadership position in the company he co-founded. The technology underlying NeXT’s hardware and software was acquired in a $429 million deal in 1996 and became the foundation of Apple’s next-generation Mac OS X operating system. When Apple CEO Gil Amelio was ousted by the company’s board of directors in 1997, Jobs returned to the company as its interim CEO. At that time, Apple was foundering under low marketshare, a confused licensing strategy, diffuse product line, and lack of focus, all of which led to much speculation in the press and online that the company would either merge with another or go under. In order to keep the company afloat, Jobs immediately began a series of sometimes-unpopular cuts, including paring from Apple’s product lines middlingly successful but passionately followed products like the Newton PDA. The first major hit product of Jobs’ second tenure at Apple was the iMac, an all-in-one computer introduced in 1998, which continues in production today. The iMac was followed by a string of hit laptop and desktop computers, though some failures - such as the Power Mac G4 cube - were mixed in. Under Jobs’ leadership, Apple returned from the brink of bankruptcy to again become a stable, successful company. But, thanks to the introduction of a small gadget, the company would soon skyrocket. In October 2001, Apple unveiled the first iPod. The cigarette-pack-sized digital music player offered 5GB of storage (enough for about 1,000 songs) and a simple interface. It was an instant hit. The development of the iPod had been ordered by Jobs – who disliked existing digital music players and their difficult interfaces – and was overseen by engineering head Jon Rubinstein and product designer Jonathan Ive. The iPod worked with Apple’s music management software, iTunes, which had been introduced in January 2001. The combination of the two, with their ease of use and powerful features, made the iPod a smash. Apple began a quick expansion of the iPod product line to include the Mini, nano, Shuffle, and later the touch, introducing new iPods roughly every six months. ITunes also evolved and added the iTunes Store for downloadable sales of music in 2003 and movies in 2005. With that move, Apple cemented its place in the music industry and made the iPod/iTunes combination the de facto standard for digital music consumption and playback. By 2008, Apple had become the world's largest retailer of music (online or offline), and record companies began to worry about Apple’s dominance in their business. In 2009, the iTunes Store sold its 6 billionth song.

The iPhone

In January 2007, Apple expanded on the success of the iPod, and positioned itself to revolutionize another market, when it announced the iPhone. That device was developed with Jobs’ oversight and involvement and was an instant hit upon its release. The first iPhone sold 270,000 units in its first 30 hours of availability, while its successor, the iPhone 3G, sold 1 million units in its first three days just a year later. By March 2009, Apple had sold over 17 million iPhones, and had surpassed quarterly sales of the previously dominant smartphone, the Blackberry. Following on the success of the iTunes Store, the iPhone got an App Store, offering third-party software, in July 2008. By January 2009, it had registered 500 million downloads, a mark it took the iTunes Store two years to reach. Apple had another hit on its hands.

Health Leave

Amidst this success, Jobs was dogged by questions about his health, especially after the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) appearance in 2006. In January 2009, Jobs issued a statement saying that his appearance was related to a hormonal imbalance that drained his body of necessary proteins. The statement added that his doctors thought they’d found a cause, that he’d seek treatment, and that he wouldn’t speak more on the topic, as he felt it was a personal matter. However, less than 10 days later it was announced that Jobs’ health problems were more serious than first realized and that he’d be taking a six-month leave of absence from the company. The company’s stock initially took a beating, but recovered to a level only a few points below the announcement within about a week. Tim Cook, the company’s chief operating officer, served as CEO in Jobs’ stead. Jobs returned to work at Apple in late June 2009, as scheduled. He has reportedly been deeply involved with Apple since his return.

Steve Jobs’ Legacy

Perhaps no other executive in modern memory, with the possible exception of Bill Gates, has been as closely tied to his company, and its success – or the public perception of that success, at least – as Jobs. Some, including Rolling Stone writer Steve Knopper, have even compared Jobs and his legacy to those of legendary business figures like Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and Walt Disney. Others, however, have been less laudatory, placing him on a second tier of historical business figures due to his smaller accumulated wealth and charitable contributions. Despite any analysis that places Jobs in rare historical company, his management and personal styles have also been the subject of legend and anxiety. Jobs has been jokingly said to possess a “reality distortion field,” a term used by many to describe the force of his personality and presence, and his ability to convince people of the correctness of his positions. His personality has also led to criticism of a management style that included strong doses of both fear and secrecy. Under Jobs, Apple has been notorious for tightly protecting details of new products launches, going so far as to sue rumors websites and hold up deals with partners who leaked information. In the new millennium, Apple has become known for its desire to — and general success in doing so — control press coverage about it. Despite these criticisms, the Apple Jobs has built is strong, with over $24 billion in cash on hand, growing marketshare, and a deeply devoted customer base. Criticism notwithstanding, it’s clear that Steve Jobs is a technology visionary who has transformed at least two markets — computers and digital music — and might yet have a lasting impact on a third, cell phones.