Goodbye to a visionary and creative genius.

Born to an unmarried interracial couple, adopted at a young age, dropped out of college and fired from him first major job. Steve Jobs went on to build two billion dollar businesses.

Unfortunately, the iconic face behind Apple lost his battle with pancreatic cancer on Wednesday and the world lost one of the true business greats.

In terms of his impact on business as well as people’s everyday lives, his legacy will be right up there with the likes of other great visionaries who introduced “life changing technology” such as Henry Ford and the mass motor car.

Steve Jobs taught the world many things and whilst there have been, and no doubt will be, lots written on his business methodologies one particular approach of his stands out as far as I’m concerned.

His creations really encase the concept of providing great products but importantly offering real “value” for these great products.

By “value” I don’t mean that they are the cheapest. In fact, they are far from the cheapest but what Apple do provide are excellent products which customers will pay a premium for as they perceive that this additional value the products offer is worth paying for. In classic Michael Porter terminology this could be referred to as “differentiation”.

Steve Jobs had an uncanny ability to spot the next great thing that customers would want and then to develop a product which although relatively expensive would create such “value” that customers would purchase it instead of cheaper options.

If Apple had competed purely on price then there would always be another company which would come along and offer a similar product for a lower price.

As well as the innovative Apple products that have hit our shelves, Steve Jobs will also be associated with the black St. Croix Collection turtleneck sweater that he would wear at product launches.

Since his death there has been a run on people wanting to buy these sweaters and the company that manufactures them, US based Knitcraft Corp has reported a surge in orders in the last 24 hours. Despite a total order run of between 4,000 to 5,000 sweaters many St Croix stores have now run out of stock.

Rest in Peace, Steve Jobs.