Steve Jobs examined how to turn obstacles into opportunities. Every business and leadership role encounters obstacles. Steve Job gave a speech to Stanford University graduates revealing that he was a University drop-out having never graduated. His start in life was tough to say the least, unwanted by his biological parents he was given up for adoption. Steve was aware that it took all of his adoptive parent’s savings to get him into college. He quit because of the expense, trusting there was a different path for him. Instead he attended drop-in classes in topics he liked while sleeping on a friends dorm floor. Together with Steve Wozniak, Jobs started a company in a garage on April 1st, 1976. The release of “Apple I” later that year, was the start of the meteoric rise of Apple Inc. Apple then grew to become a $2 billion dollar company with thousands of employees. One year after the Mac’s introduction Steve Jobs was ousted from Apple. Disagreements between the co-founders resulted in the board of Directors siding with Steve Wozniak and firing Steve Jobs from his own company! Steve Jobs, (in his speech at Stanford University 2005) said “I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me.” Jobs turned this obstacle into an opportunity and focused on his two new ventures, Next and Pixar. He eventually returned to Apple to make it even bigger than before with the iPod. He was a survivor of pancreatic cancer until it returned to take his life in 2011. Jobs clearly accomplished so much with so little despite stresses that presented in his life. I think it was more practical intelligence that let Jobs overcome this obstacle and emotional strength. IQ got him through his childhood and getting into a good college, but after that once the computers came into play, practical intelligence took over, for more hands on stuff. His failures led to success. Jobs valued people.