I thought this game was never going to end. Not football game. The “Will RIM CEOs ever Step Down?” game.

– AllThingsD‘s Ina Fried, via Twitter

The New York Times published something of an exit interview with Palmisano over the weekend. It read a bit like a victory lap, and that’s not undeserved. The record books will show that IBM shares during the Palmisano era (2003-2011) rose by 125 percent; sales grew from $81 billion in 2002 to an expected $107 billion; and annual profits on a per-share basis went from $3.07 to a consensus forecast of $13.38.

But it got me to thinking about one of the highlights of the Palmisano era; one that generated a great deal of attention at the time: IBM’s decision to sell its personal computer division to Lenovo, the Chinese PC maker. It was a relatively small deal, worth less than $2 billion at the time, but it was a controversial move. Despite the fact that IBM wasn’t making much money on the business, IBM PCs, especially its ThinkPad line of notebooks, were generally considered to be pretty good.

Nearly seven years later, it’s worth noting that Lenovo is now the world’s second-largest PC vendor, behind Hewlett-Packard, having vaulted past Dell earlier this year, according to the market research firm IDC. It’s also worth noting that Lenovo is in fifth place in the U.S., behind HP, Dell, Apple and Toshiba, in that order.

IBM initially owned 15 percent of Lenovo and maintained a stake in that company until February of this year, when it sold its remaining 4.3 percent shares at a profit of more than a quarter-billion dollars.

Lenovo’s biggest shareholder is Legend Holdings, of which 36 percent is owned by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, a.k.a. CAS Holdings, a state-controlled entity. The state has pared back its stake, though: When the IBM-Lenovo deal was announced in 2005, Lenovo was 57 percent state-owned.

There was a lot of natural controversy, and even national security concerns in 2005, about selling so red-blooded an American product as the IBM PC to China. But there was also a solid business case to consider. The PC business was a drag on earnings because of downward price pressure exerted by Dell and all the others, and it wasn’t even leading the market, as was the case with Hewlett-Packard, which engaged in some very public contemplation about spinning off its own PC division.

But there was also a potential strategic benefit, which Michael Useem, a professor a the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Management, pointed out at the time: Making friends with China.

By selling an underperforming asset to a buyer willing to take it and run with it, IBM got solid access to the exploding Chinese market. In paraphrased remarks to the Times, Palmisano concedes the point:

Palmisano says he deflected overtures from Dell and private equity firms, preferring the sale to a company in China for strategic reasons: the Chinese government wants its corporations to expand globally, and by aiding that national goal, IBM enhanced its stature in the lucrative Chinese market, where the government still steers business.

So how has that worked out? It’s a little hard to tell from reading Big Blue’s Byzantine financial statements. In fiscal 2005, the year the deal closed, IBM reported $18.6 billion, or about 20 percent of revenue, came from the Asia-Pacific region, including China.

And though it declined to provide specific dollar amounts, it said that year that sales in China had dropped by 19 percent, but after after stripping out the PC division, would have grown by 8 percent.

For the first nine months of fiscal 2011, IBM reported that the Asia-Pacific region accounted for exactly the same dollar figure — $18.6 billion — amounting to 24 percent of its overall sales of $77.4 billion, and there’s still a quarter to go. That would put Asia on track to account for a little less than a quarter of IBM’s revenue.

In its earnings statement, IBM also makes a point of calling attention to what it calls “growth markets,” which are generally the BRIC countries — Brazil, Russia, India and China. These markets combined for 23 percent of sales in IBM’s most recent quarter.

This is about as close to understanding the size of IBM’s business in China as we’re going to get. On balance, it looks to have been a positive move, especially when you consider that if IBM had kept its PC division, it would have likely only gotten smaller and become more of a profit drag on a company that’s increasingly focused on high-margin businesses like services and consulting.

Nor can we judge by IBM’s headcount. Globally, as of the publication of its last annual report, IBM employed 426,751 people. But it has stopped providing a geographical breakdown. A report in the Times of India in 2010, mentioned by The Wall Street Journal, suggested that Big Blue’s headcount in India might be as high as 130,000; which, if true, would make it one of that country’s top 10 employers.

There is no question that IBM’s presence in China has grown. You can tell by the press releases. There was for example, a new IBM Research lab in Shanghai in 2008, and another in 2010. Just last month, IBM announced that it had closed a significant IT deal for a major health-care provider in Hong Kong, and another with a Chinese province to improve the safety of pork (which included a food-safety video I embedded below).

For better or worse, Palmisano will be remembered as the man who traded PCs for access to China. On balance, it seems to have been a good trade, but the jury is still out.

Tomorrow is the first business day of IBM’s Rometty era. Assuming she retires at age 60, a well-established IBM tradition, she’ll have about six years to make her mark. One wonders what she’ll be remembered for most.

While much of the attention may focus on the original letter written by Gloria Allred to Mark Hurd claiming a pattern of sexual harassment of the marketing contractor Jodie Fisher, the fact remains that he was fully exonerated of those allegations by an internal Hewlett-Packard investigation conducted by the law firm of Covington & Burling on behalf of HP’s board of directors.

In fact, what got Hurd ousted from his job as HP’s CEO on Aug. 6, 2010, were questions related to his expense reports.

So what do they show?

AllThingsD has obtained some background notes that were prepared in connection with the so-called Covington Report — which a Delaware judge has ruled will remain under seal — delivered to HP’s board during the summer of 2010. The one page of notes goes into some detail about the nature of the four of Hurd’s expense reports that specifically name Fisher as having been in attendance.

This is a key detail because HP’s official reason, as explained by then general counsel Michael Holston on Aug. 6, 2010, was that Hurd’s expense reports were prepared in a way that “had the effect of concealing Mark’s personal relationship with the contractor.”

How might Hurd have arguably used an expense report in this way? By leaving her name off of reports claiming expenses for certain dinners.

But here are four examples of expense reports where Fisher was specifically named. By way of explanation, mentions of “Fimbres” refer to Hurd’s assistant Caprice Fimbres, who had hired Fisher in the first place.

A third person is listed as being in attendance on three of the four occasions. In one instance, it is Hurd’s assistant Fimbres, who arranged the dinners — but might not, in fact, have attended.

In another, it is Denis Lynch, Hurd’s security guard, who also might have been nearby but not at the actual dinner.

In another, it is John Spires, but it is unclear exactly who he is. (Note: The expense note could be referencing John Spiers — spelled differently — who was CTO and founder of LeftHand Networks, which was sold to HP in 2008; he is now CEO and founder of NexGen Storage.)

September  12,  2007 — Fimbres later seeks reimbursement for “Dinner with HP Host for CEO Events” for the night of September 12. Dinner was billed to Sullivan’s and the listed attendees are Hurd and Fisher. Total reimbursed amount is $99.86.

October 26, 2007 – Fimbres later seeks reimbursement for dinner at the hotel the night of Oct. 26 in the amount of $319.47. The listed attendees are Hurd, Fisher and Denis Lynch (HP employee).

July 30, 2008 — An expense report filed by Caprice Fimbres shows a charge for “dinner with three people” – Fimbres, Hurd and Fisher — in midtown Tokyo for $326.50.

August 3, 2009 – A Fimbres expense report shows a $347.42 charge for dinner at W Steak in Beverly Hills. Listed attendees are Hurd, Fisher and John Spires. Stated business purpose is “Dinner while in Los Angeles with HP Customer Roundtable Host,” and there is the following expense comment: “High Cost restaurant although didn’t order that much.”

The first meeting mentioned in this group would appear to coincide with a meeting in Denver described in the Allred letter. Fisher, as Allred tells it, was being considered for a job, but the meeting “felt more like a date.”

HP has never disclosed the detailed accounts of the problems with Hurd’s expense reports that led to his resignation, and probably never will. Hurd was, after all, two CEOs ago now, and HP obviously has other priorities.

And Hurd is now co-president at Oracle, HP’s bitter rival.

But these details, if nothing else, raise some additional questions about the circumstances that led HP’s board to conclude that it had lost its trust in Hurd.

It’s the typically newsless time around Christmas and New Year’s, but for once there has actually been a lot going on at Yahoo.

Last week, the Silicon Valley Internet giant’s typically moribund board decided to move ahead with negotiations to sell part of its stake in China’s Alibaba Group, as well as all of its shares in Yahoo Japan.

While that is still not a done deal, it adds clarity to the Yahoo mishegas, as current leaders there seek to turn around the company’s lagging fortunes.

Now, as Yahoo continues to contemplate a pair of partial investment bids by private equity firms Silver Lake and TPG Capital into 2012, more focus will be on the selection of a CEO candidate to take over, sources said.

While I have floated some names that have been contemplated — such as Hulu CEO Jason Kilar, Juniper CEO Kevin Johnson, former aQuantive and Microsoft exec Brian McAndrews, and board member David Kenny — I have collected some more that seem to be getting the once-over and are being mentioned internally as well as externally.

Sources said that the Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee at Yahoo, which is run by independent director Patti Hart, has been looking for someone with definite public company experience, as well as expertise in large-scale management.

As to talent, candidates seem to be either good at running big platforms, or deeply knowledgeable about advertising and media as well as technology.

Another important criteria, said sources: Someone who is “collaborative” and nonconfrontational. As in, not like the former and very pugnacious CEO Carol Bartz, who was fired in September.

Thus, here’s another trio of candidates to consider, while we wait — and who knows how long that will be given that the Asian activity could have tired out for a bit this usually slow-moving board:

Chris Liddell: The former CFO of Microsoft is an interesting name that just popped up recently, and it makes some sense when you think about the possible mindset of the Yahoo board.

Liddell, who has a charming New Zealand accent, did a short stint, from January of 2010 to March of this year, as CFO at General Motors. Recently married to another former Microsoft exec, he has since been living in New York.

He apparently loves living in the Big Apple.

But when he left GM, Liddell made it clear he wanted to go for a top job next. He was among the candidates for a recent search for a CEO of Time Warner’s Time Inc. (an effort that was run by exec search firm Heidrick & Struggles, which is also conducting the Yahoo hunt).

Known as tough and decisive, he certainly is qualified to deal with complex financial situations, such as the one in which Yahoo now finds itself knee-deep. One knock: Little product or advertising experience.

Laura Desmond: While certainly a dark horse, Desmond has been queried by Heidrick, said several sources.

She is CEO of Starcom MediaVest Group, a subsidiary of Publicis, one of the largest media planning and buying agencies, making Desmond one of advertising’s most prominent players.

Well-known in Yahoo’s key market, she is considered a savvy and smart exec with a wry sense of humor.

I happen to particularly like one line from one of her bios:

“Ms. Desmond’s career has been driven by two caveats: Take intelligent risks and learn more from failure than from success.”

She could learn a lot at Yahoo. (I know, easy jab, but it works!)

David Rosenblatt: The former DoubleClick CEO, who went on to a big ad job at Google after it paid $3.2 billion for the company, is also a long shot, mostly by his own choosing.

The sharp exec is always on the short list of CEO candidates for a lot of big, splashy online jobs, but he seems to want to swim his own way.

Case in point: He was recently named CEO of New York-based 1stdibs, a relatively obscure online marketplace known among antique dealers and interior designers looking for one-of-a-kind furniture, art and lighting.

Yes, that’s right: Fancy lamps.

Rosenblatt also serves on the boards at Group Commerce, Twitter and IAC.

All that Internet ad and e-commerce experience is exactly why Rosenblatt would be one of the better choices for CEO of Yahoo. But, for him, I would guess taking such a job is probably in the life’s-too-short category.

More to come, obvi!

Whatever you want to call him or her — a silver bullet, the cure or, as I like to say, the last unicorn — Yahoo’s ever-seeking and never-deciding board has now renewed its focus on finding a new CEO.

Also on the docket: Working on a deal to sell back at least some of its stake in its twin Asian assets — Yahoo Japan and the Alibaba Group — back to the companies. A partial sale of stock back could placate the often tense situation among the partners.

What is clear is that the two bids from private equity firms are now in an undetermined circling pattern — due to a variety of concerns around shareholder unrest (Occupy Yahoo looms for 2012).

Therefore, the idea of bringing in said fantasy leader to perhaps finally be the one to revive the long-troubled company has returned to the forefront of action, according to numerous sources both inside and outside the company.

The concept in short, said people familiar with the situation: Hire some compelling and entrepreneurial CEO to get the company moving again from a product point of view, do a massive organizational overhaul and help settle Yahoo’s thorny Asian issues.

While a number of names have been rumored in reports — such as Google business lead Nikesh Arora, who is actually not likely to leave his top post at the search giant — sources said the board has been targeting a number of candidates, including Hulu CEO Jason Kilar.

Others on Yahoo’s wish list include Juniper CEO Kevin Johnson and online advertising entrepreneur Brian McAndrews, who sold aQuantive to Microsoft. There are several others also being considered.

Sources said Kilar has met with Yahoo board members about the offer, but his hiring would be a long shot.

It’s an interesting — if complex — gambit to bring in Kilar, who has had his own wrangles with the multi-owner structure of the premium video service over the years.

Kilar’s status at Hulu has been in question ever since it was put on the block, then removed and then — well — who knows.

Hulu’s owners — News Corp., Disney and Providence Equity Partners, along with Comcast (which is a now a passive investor) — did not like the offers it got from various bidders, including Yahoo.

While the media giants have made noises about wanting to keep a stake in distribution, their commitment to that remains unclear.

The situation has put Kilar — who already had tense relations with the service’s shareholders — in limbo until a valuation is determined next year. Without going into the complex details, Kilar has a large equity stake that could be liquid in April, related to certain rights held by Providence.

It is well known that Kilar has been concerned the team that built Hulu gets some sort of payout for their work. In fact, many years ago, Hulu was seen as a possible IPO candidate.

What’s not in question is Kilar’s talent at creating a cohesive team and a compelling product — especially with an advertising and media focus — and the need at Yahoo for a vibrant leader to encourage innovation and discourage its rapidly increasing attrition issues.

The search for a new Yahoo CEO — which is being led by director Patti Hart, and is being conducted by Heidrick & Struggles — had been mostly sidelined until recently, as the board solicited bids for a partial investment from PE firms.

Two emerged, from Silver Lake and TPG Capital, which had wanted to pay from $16.50 to $18 a share for a stake of just under 20 percent in what is called a PIPE (Private Investment in Public Equity) arrangement.

But the low price, and worries about lawsuits and even a proxy fight related to such a deal, have slowed down the momentum significantly, said sources.

Instead, Yahoo has told bidders it will get back to them in the coming weeks about the direction it will take. Thus, the focus on lining up CEO candidates and plans related to reviving Yahoo.

Some of those possible execs have put their hand up, while others — like Kilar — are being solicited. In addition, some still think that Yahoo board member David Kenny remains an internal option, especially if the board of Yahoo gets a refresh, despite his recent announcement that he has no intention of seeking the job.

In general, this shift should not come has a surprise for the hurry-up-and-wait board of Yahoo, which has struggled over the years to make good choices for the Silicon Valley Internet giant.

That drift has resulted in a downturn in its prospects, even as other companies have surged.

Those troubles were brought into sharp focus in a recent report by new Goldman Sachs Internet analyst Heath Terry, who strafed Yahoo in his “sell” recommendation.

Among the gems by an analyst whose investment bank is currently an advisor to Yahoo on its strategic options:

Yahoo simply faces too many competitive and structural headwinds to believe any kind of meaningful turnaround is possible. While there is significant asset value on the balance sheet and in the company’s large, though increasingly less engaged user base, we continue to believe, as we have since before the first Microsoft offer, that the segment of management driving the company is intent on trying to revive Yahoo as a company, regardless of the cost to shareholders.

And, noting the need for a new CEO:

We would become more positive if we felt there was a likely event in the near term that might unlock the value of the balance sheet assets at Yahoo. While we believe the aggregate value of those assets is above the value reflected in YHOO, in order to be more positive on the stock we would need some proof that management is willing and able to take the steps necessary to unlock that value either through a sale or distribution to shareholders. Meanwhile, the declining profitability of the core display advertising business is masked by a search business that continues to lose share and relies on artificial support from Microsoft. We would become more positive on the core Yahoo business if the company is able to find a new CEO capable of focusing the business on its core advertising and communications opportunities, rationalizing costs, and driving growth. This would require user growth and especially engagement improvements in both online and mobile, improving monetization of advertising inventory, and stabilizing its search business.

In other words: Wanted, one unicorn to work magic against increasingly troublesome dragons. Ability to sparkle a plus.

In a positively Shermanesque blog post titled “A Clarification With Respect to Yahoo,” Marc Andreessen wrote that neither he nor partner Jeff Jordan would become an operating exec, including CEO, acting CEO, chairman or executive chairman at the troubled Internet giant.

Of course, if the VC firm wins the partial investment deal against other bidders, Andreessen will absolutely be a key player in the remaking of the company. Already, he and Jordan have met with numerous Yahoo execs as they have assessed the company.

The bid by Silver Lake and Andreessen Horowitz is about $16.50 a share for slightly less than 20 percent of the company. The group, which is competing with another bid by TPG Capital, has a lot of other plans around reviving Yahoo and dealing with its myriad of issues.

The reason for the pronouncement, sources said (and I am just boldly declaring myself) is because the firm is now in the middle of raising a mega-funding round of up to $1.5 billion and limited partners are worried about a lack of focus on its many other investments.

So Marc and Jeff are fully committed to moolah-making at the VC firm. Please pay no attention to the whole Yahoo mishegas over in that corner there!

Here’s the entire post (full disclosure — I got the Jordan part right, but surmised that Andreessen could become chairman if his group won the bid):

A Clarification With Respect to Yahoo

From Marc Andreessen, co-founder and general partner of Andreessen Horowitz:

Over the last several weeks, there have been erroneous reports in the press that my partner Jeff Jordan and/or I might become an operating executive of Yahoo in some capacity.

To be crystal clear, neither Jeff, nor I, nor any of our partners at Andreessen Horowitz, are in the running for, or would accept, any operating role at Yahoo, including CEO, acting CEO, chairman, or executive chairman.

Jeff and I have high regard for Yahoo, but we are fully committed to our day jobs as general partners at Andreessen Horowitz and board members of our portfolio companies.

Maybe get something cooking in the whole what-will-Yahoo-do stakes, now that one of Yahoo’s more active board members is back.

And by “back,” I mean that Kenny — no longer a candidate for CEO — has no further need to recuse himself from the strategic process in which the Silicon Valley Internet company finds itself.

In an interview with Advertising Age last week, Kenny — the well-regarded online ad exec who recently stepped down as president of network infrastructure giant Akamai — released an unusual statement:

As a matter of policy, I do not comment on matters related to Yahoo as a Yahoo director. However, as a personal matter, I want to clarify that I believe Yahoo is a great company with enormous potential, but I am not — and will not be — a candidate for the CEO position. I look forward to my continued service on the Yahoo Board of Directors.”

By removing himself from the fray, that means, according to several sources, that Kenny will be diving back into sleeve-rolling duties at Yahoo, as one of its — how can I put this? — less comatose board members.

In fact — until he was sidelined by the obvious conflict of interest inherent in wanting to be CEO, while also directing the fate of Yahoo for shareholder value — Kenny had been deeply involved in a lot of the changes that had taken place of late, after a long period of board inaction.

That included the ouster of CEO Carol Bartz, who was fired for a number of reasons, including lack of strategic vision. It was relatively new board member Kenny — he became a director in February — who led the strategy committee that had asked Bartz for her road map, which she did not deliver to their liking. Obviously.

Because of the swirl around his possible CEO candidacy — Kenny was a noticeable inside candidate, since he is well known in the Internet advertising world for running and then selling Digitas to the Publicis Groupe for $1.3 billion in 2006 — he gave up leadership of the committee to Intuit President Brad Smith.

Sources said it is unlikely Kenny will get that top job back, but he remains a member of the transactions committee, which is leading the strategic review of the company.

That’s the key slot for the independent board members of Yahoo, who must ultimately be the ones to determine what path or offer the company will take.

One plus: Kenny has close relationships with most of the bidders — largely private equity firms — looking at Yahoo, and also is well known among the media and tech companies poking around, too. He also has advertising — and now tech — experience, which will be much needed as Yahoo explores its options.

Most importantly, Kenny is an independent director, which will be very important to the process going forward, especially since a lot of the spotlight has fallen on Yahoo co-founder and director Jerry Yang.

Yang — who has been a bit of a Yahoo lightning rod at times — has been involved in some of the meetings with those interested, along with interim CEO Tim Morse. The company recently noted that this was at the behest of the board.

While these were only informational meetings so far — and not negotiations, as some reports have surmised — Yang’s involvement will likely have to be more curtailed, at least publicly, especially if any of the deals include using his own large stake in Yahoo.

“This process has to be above board, since it is so easy for those wanting a better deal to try to cause all kinds of trouble,” said one source. “The company is already under attack in that regard.”

That’s a reference to a recent salvo by hedge fund activist Dan Loeb, a major Yahoo shareholder who has taken aim at the board and, last week, at Yang. Loeb essentially accused Yang of double-dealing in the process.

Enter Kenny, along with Smith and — to an increasingly lesser extent, of late — Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock. While there are other independent board members involved, these are the three to watch most closely now.

While some think Kenny still would like to be CEO of Yahoo — he was also on the short list several years ago when Bartz was hired — sources said he is more likely to take a job at another consumer Internet company.

While he certainly could slot into a large advertising firm or into the digital division of a big media concern, sources said Kenny is looking to be a CEO.

Just not at Yahoo.

At least for now, since down the road it is unclear what will become of Yahoo and who will run it in years to come.

In fact, it might even be Kenny in the end.

Now that there’s a new boss at HP — one who’s staffing up — I’m adding a new image: A paratrooper. After all, despite the fact that HP’s new CEO Meg Whitman is getting things at HP calmed down, there’s still some more drama to come. Anyone taking a new executive job is — by a stretch of phrase — “parachuting in.” Get it? And the parachute picture won’t apply just to HP, either — it also works for posts about other companies that are working through their own dramas. (Cisco Systems, I’m looking at you!)

Anyhow, the paratrooper image also works when you hear where the new guy comes from: Boeing. HP named John Hinshaw, the former vice president and general manager of Boeing Information Solutions, as its new executive vice president of Global Technology and Business Processes.

Hinshaw — who is, by my count, Whitman’s first senior hire since taking over as CEO last month — is 41, and will oversee HP’s information technology and administrative services. He’ll be in charge of procuring service and making sure all the business processes are running as smoothly and efficiently as they should be. It’s a big job, and as such, Hinshaw will be a member of HP’s executive council and report directly to Whitman.

In his previous position, Hinshaw was responsible for running Boeing’s high-growth businesses, which included delivering IT solutions to the U.S. government. Before that, he was Boeing’s CIO responsible for global IT strategy, operations, process and people. Before that, he was senior vice president and CIO at Verizon Wireless. And before that, he was a consultant at Accenture.

In the same announcement, HP also said that Craig Flower has been promoted to senior vice president and CIO. He’s been with HP since 1984 (so no paratrooper for him), and will report to Hinshaw. He’ll oversee data management, applications, global business intelligence and a bunch of other stuff. He’s held a wide range of IT positions within HP, including its e-business operations, customer and sales groups, and the all-important Personal Systems Group. If there’s a guy who knows what’s what at HP, it seems Flower would be it.

Update: As the commenter below just reminded me, Flower is taking the title held by former CIO Randy Mott, who left in HP’s big summer shakeup.

Tomorrow, after the markets close, Yahoo will announce its third-quarter earnings, perhaps one of its more important reports in recent years.

Wall Street analysts are expecting the Silicon Valley Internet giant to report earnings of 17 cents per share on $1.07 billion in revenues.

But whether or not Yahoo has beat expectations will be less scrutinized than information about the state of Yahoo’s key search and display advertising businesses, as well as other user metrics.

It is at those numbers that a range of players — including major shareholders, possible bidders and media — will be looking to see just how badly the company’s business has fared with all the turmoil of late.

That has included the firing of its CEO Carol Bartz, a massive strategic review that includes the possibility of a sale to a range of mostly private equity buyers, a persistent attrition problem and a worry that the company continues to drift in its product innovation, even as others have surged.

Last week, I reported that Yahoo had finally selected an executive search firm to help it find a new CEO, which many think is a difficult task given the uncertain situation.

A series of worrisome trends across its ad businesses over several recent quarters has some looking at the company for possible purchase with some skepticism.

“What if it is too broken to fix, what if trends to Google’s and Facebook’s premium offerings is too overwhelming?” said one potential bidder for Yahoo. “There are a lot of what-ifs at Yahoo.”

By comparison, Google posted impressive earnings last week.

Yahoo stock closed at $15.70 today, down 1.3 percent.

Below, a collection of some the more memorable ones.

• “If Apple becomes a place where computers are a commodity item, where the romance is gone, and where people forget that computers are the most incredible invention that man has ever invented, I’ll feel I have lost Apple. But if I’m a million miles away, and all those people still feel those things … then I will feel that my genes are still there.”
• “Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.”
• “Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.”
• “My job is to not be easy on people. My job is to make them better.”
• “When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.”
• “People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully.”
• “My position coming back to Apple was that our industry was in a coma. It reminded me of Detroit in the ’70s, when American cars were boats on wheels.”
• “Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it’s really how it works. The design of the Mac wasn’t what it looked like, although that was part of it. Primarily, it was how it worked. To design something really well, you have to get it. You have to really grok what it’s all about.”
• “Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.”
• “Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me. Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful, that’s what matters to me.”
• “Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It’s not about money. It’s about the people you have, how you’re led, and how much you get it.”
• “Innovation … comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don’t get on the wrong track or try to do too much. We’re always thinking about new markets we could enter, but it’s only by saying no that you can concentrate on the things that are really important.”
• “I grew up in Silicon Valley. My parents moved from San Francisco to Mountain View when I was five. My dad got transferred and that was right in the heart of Silicon Valley so there were engineers all around. Silicon Valley for the most part at that time was still orchards–apricot orchards and prune orchards–and it was really paradise. I remember the air being crystal clear, where you could see from one end of the valley to the other…It was really the most wonderful place in the world to grow up.”
• “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.”
• “When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: ‘If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.’ It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: ‘If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ And whenever the answer has been ‘No’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.”
• “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
• “My model for business is The Beatles.There were four guys who kept each others, kind of, negative tendencies in check. They balanced each other, and the total was greater than the sum of the parts. And that’s how I see business. You know, great things in business are never done by one person. They’re done by a team of people.”
• “I get asked a lot why Apple’s customers are so loyal. It’s not because they belong to the Church of Mac! That’s ridiculous. It’s because when you buy our products, and three months later you get stuck on something, you quickly figure out [how to get past it]. And you think, ‘Wow, someone over there at Apple actually thought of this!’”
• “Apple has a core set of talents, and those talents are: we do, I think, very good hardware design; we do very good industrial design; and we write very good system and application software. And we’re really good at packaging that all together into a product…We’re the only people left in the computer industry [who] do that. And we’re really the only people in the consumer electronics industry [who] go deep in software in consumer products. So those talents can be used to make personal computers, and they can also be used to make things like iPods.”
• “Our children are our hearts running around outside our bodies.”
• “Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

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• A base salary of $1 per year. In doing so she’s following the example of another well-known CEO who just stepped down from his job: Former Apple CEO and now Chairman Steve Jobs.
• An option to purchase 1.9 million shares of HP under its 2004 stock incentive plan. The exercise price would be equal to the market value of the share price on the grant date. The options will vest over eight years, but are considered fully vested only if HP’s share price rises by 40 percent or more. As of today that number of shares is worth $45.2 million.
• 100,000 of those shares will vest on each of the first three anniversaries of Whitman’s anniversary of service, provided she’s still on the job.
• An additional 800,000 of those 1.9 million shares will vest after one year, provided HP’s share price has risen by 120 percent and stayed that high for at least 20 days.
• Yet another 800,000 of those shares vest on the second anniversary of her date of service, provided the share price is up 140 percent or better for 20 consecutive days.
• Whitman will also get the same annual cash bonus of $2.4 million each year, with a maximum equal to 2.5 times the target of HP’s existing incentive plan, which is tied to cash flow performance.
• If she’s fired, she receives a severance benefit payment equal to 1.5 times the sum of her annual base salary — a whole $1.50 — plus the average of her bonuses paid during the preceding three years.

In a note to clients today, Sacconaghi says that HP is the “most inexpensive tech stock in the S&P 500 and the 10th most inexpensive stock overall.” There are very few precedents, he says, for large-cap technology stocks trading at HP’s current valuation. Before this month, there had not been a large-cap tech stock that traded at less than 5.5 times earnings — not in the last 20 years.

At that level, he says, HP’s current valuation implies that its annual free cash flow will decline by 9 percent a year forever or, put another way, that HP will be half its size within seven years. Usually companies that trade so low have significant structural problems. HP, for all its faults, doesn’t meet that standard. It’s not “a broken company,” he says, it’s on track to grow earnings by 6 percent this year, and it leads in three of its four key lines of business — PCs, printers and servers.

So why the crazy-low valuation? “Investor exasperation.” (There’s that word again!) Investors have discounted it too much given all the drama, making it, believe it or not, a buying opportunity for “patient investors.” He rates HP an “outperform” with a price target of $37. Investors seemed to warm to the idea. HP shares finished the day up more than 3 percent.

First off, let’s get this out of the way:

No, Groupon has no current plans to pull its IPO, nor has it considered it as yet, even though its delays — not uncommon — get copious negative press. Though it certainly might in the future.

Yes, the Chicago-based social buying service is still growing more strongly than most start-ups and is expected to become profitable on an operating basis within the next month.

No, the Groupon board has not discussed jacking its CEO and co-founder Andrew Mason — I get a tip email on this on a daily basis — but it will also not be hiring another COO to replace the second one it has lost in a year.

And, finally, yes sirree, many of the recent kerfuffles that Groupon has found itself in most certainly could have been better handled by Mason and that board, who have presided over one the rockier and more cloddish IPO rides in recent memory.

In fact, has there ever been a tech start-up that has attracted more negative attention from the media than Groupon?

Maybe Amazon back in the day when it was being called Amazon.bomb? Or perhaps the early years of Facebook, when questionable origins, executive shifts and constant privacy snafus created worry around the leadership of CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg?

But, as it has turned out, both have paled in comparison to the trials and tribulations of Groupon, which came out of nowhere like some kind of Internet comet and now is being widely pilloried as a flash in the pan.

Whether that’s fair criticism or not will be up to investors as the company continues its march to a public offering, which sources close to the company say will not be pulled unless the markets tank drastically.

That’s despite three amended S-1 regulatory filings by Groupon that corrected controversial accounting treatments that the company was using.

One, called Adjusted Consolidated Segment Operating Income, or ACSOI, was attacked because it left out key marketing expenses. While Groupon said it was an important metric to judge the performance of various cities as they were rolled out, the Securities and Exchange Commission and many others thought it caused more confusion than clarity.

The other financial term under scrutiny: The naming of gross billings, which is what Groupon pays out to merchants, as gross revenues. No longer, with the latest amendment to its S-1 filing; Groupon becomes instead a net revenue reporter for its daily deals business.

The change reduced reported revenue for 2010 from $713.4 million to $312.9 million.

Also added in were parts of the controversial letter CEO Andrew Mason sent to employees — defending all of Groupon’s financial practices and disclosures — presumably to reassure them in the wake of all the bad press.

While it displayed a lot of Mason’s signature humorous bravado, the move felt to me more like someone frustrated with being asked by current and potential employees if he were the Internet version of Bernie Madoff.

That’s ridonkulous, of course.

But the aggressive accounting, quick change from using those controversial financial metrics and chaotic breakneck growth that makes the company look like a house on fire certainly creates a picture of drama at a time when calm is probably the image they would like to portray.

Of course, losing two COOs — first, former Yahoo Rob Solomon after a year and then former Googler Margo Georgiadis after less than six months — in a row cannot help but increase the pressure. (And it cannot help Groupon’s image that Georgiadis went back to an even better job at the search giant.)

Sources said the company has no plans to hire another one, instead empowering Mason’s direct reports such as its CFO and others.

That said, while sources inside the company spin this as no big deal and can roll out plausible excuses for the COO departures — which mostly center around the execs being a “bad fit” — such movements always create worry.

In fact, this also happened to Facebook in its earliest days, when it seemed like an executive revolving door. That’s changed, of course, with the social networking giant looking like the digital Rock of Gibraltar in comparison.

A rock that has not been in any hurry to go public, which Groupon did perhaps too early in June — just about when all this bad news starting piling up, after more than a year of praise from the very same media.

I suppose, you live by it and you, well, get smacked upside the head by it.

But not damaged enough to pull the IPO, as yet, that is. One of the many reasons for sticking for now — such a move would result in yet another firestorm for Groupon.

Said one person I spoke to: “It would not matter what anyone said, no one would believe the company was anything but in trouble.”

And then, of course, the real trouble would start.

We’ll see what happens next, of course.

The issue of ambiguous leadership has become increasingly thorny as more CEOs stay on their employer’s payroll as executive chairman — a well-compensated, full-time position with management and board duties.

The number of executive chairmen of Fortune 500 companies who used to be CEOs there has surged to 35 this year from just 17 in 2008, according to an analysis for The Wall Street Journal by recruiters Egon Zehnder International.

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Then word came, via AllThingsD, that something big was coming from the board of directors. And as AllThingsD first reported (again), HP directors made one of their own, Meg Whitman, the former eBay CEO who had become a director earlier this year, the new CEO. Léo Apotheker resigned, but don’t cry for him, because according to his contract, he made out rather well. Even before it was made official, investors applauded the move, sending HP shares skyward.

Analysts did what they always do, and, well, analyzed. And though it looked more like drama criticism, it’s not as if HP hasn’t known boardroom dramas before. Finally, the deed was done, meaning it was time to hold a conference call, but not before talking first to Kara Swisher of AllThingsD.

I got to talk to Whitman and HP Chairman Ray Lane yesterday, too, but I had to wait until after the conference call. With so many critics screaming that Whitman has no experience running an enterprise hardware company — and let’s be honest, there aren’t that many who do — I asked her to elaborate on the defense, made on the conference call with analysts, that her experience as a buyer of enterprise technology, during her years as CEO at eBay, provided important experience that will help her be an effective CEO at HP. I also asked about Autonomy, the British software firm that HP is in the process of acquiring for $10 billion, and how it will fit within HP; about the company’s plans for cloud services; and about the state of the HP brand amid all the corporate mishegas that has unfolded in the last several months.

AllThingsD: Meg, the main criticism of you, since you’ve been named CEO of HP, is that your primary experience before was at eBay, which is a consumer-facing company. The response on yesterday’s conference call has been that at eBay you were a purchaser of a lot of enterprise technology and that this gives you some important relevant experience. I get the point, but could you elaborate on it a bit? How does having been an enterprise buyer help you be HP’s CEO?

Whitman: What HP needs now more than anything else is management skills, communication skills and a commitment to executional excellence, all of which I know well, and are sort of core competencies from my 35-year career in business. I know technology because I ran a company whose very existence would not have been possible without it, and was a very significant buyer of technology products. And so that brings me a unique buyer’s perspective. But I have not spent 35 years in the enterprise business. Add so what that means is that I will be relying heavily on Dave Donatelli; on Todd Bradley; on the senior executives at HP; and also, frankly, on Ray Lane, who was at Oracle for many years, and EDS, and who knows this space well. So I think what customers will get is that one plus one equals three.

Lane: I agree with that. What we need here, and what we didn’t have before, is operational execution, communication skills, getting the team on the same page and leading them. The CEOs of $130 billion companies are not leading the technology development of those companies. I think Meg can go into any enterprise and visit with any CIO or CEO and do really well. So whether it is the technology side or the sales side, I don’t think anyone is giving her enough credit on those fronts. She can do just fine. And then on top of that she has strong operating executives under her who do know the enterprise business. But right now it is the need for leadership of the people, a focus on executing and operating. I could point back to Lou Gerstner at IBM, or even my own days at Oracle. When I joined Oracle, people thought the board had lost its mind, because I was a consultant at Booz Allen. People scoffed and said ‘How is a consultant going to lead the worldwide sales force at Oracle, a trained wolf pack?’ And somehow I figured it out. And I knew nothing about software, but I learned, and I learned from Larry Ellison, who is one of the best.

I want to talk a bit about Autonomy, and about unstructured data. You made a comment about that when you talked with Kara Swisher of AllThingsD yesterday. Talk to me about where you see Autonomy fitting within HP. Do you still intend to let it be independent? How do you see the alignment shaping up?

Whitman: It’s a big and fast-growing market. Of all the data out there, about 15 percent of it is structured and 85 percent of it is unstructured. And the unstructured data is growing by leaps and bounds. There are not a lot of good software companies that can help companies manage unstructured data and help companies make business decisions based on what they see in that unstructured data. So what we hope to do with Autonomy, and I’m enthusiastic about this acquisition, is take what is fabulous about Autonomy — they have a leading position in the marketplace — and put it through the very powerful HP distribution system. And I think what Mike Lynch is excited about — he is the founder and CEO of Autonomy — is taking this great product and getting it into more people’s hands. And we just need to grow this company as fast as we can; extend our lead and our accumulated experience in this area. So that’s the plan for Autonomy.

Lane: Yeah, I think the synergies are great, and I think it makes a lot of sense. It will make a lot of sense to customers if HP engages them in a dialogue of managing unstructured data.

You don’t think HP paid too much for Autonomy?

Whitman: You know what? It is what it is.

Lane: We wish we could have bought it for cheaper, but it was the market price. People thought we overpaid for 3Par, and you know what? We’re hitting it out of the park.

Is HP still going to be player in cloud services? That was a big commitment that Léo made in March. How far along is that plan?

Lane: Absolutely. The cloud is way ahead of plan. So our cloud services have gone live. So that is absolutely part of the plan, yes.

Meg, a lot of the same people who applauded your selection to HP’s board of directors are criticizing your selection as CEO. Why do you think there’s a disconnect?

Whitman: I don’t know. There’s always people who have different points of view on things. What I have to do — and I said this on the conference call — is lead this company, make it a great company again and fulfill its destiny as the icon of Silicon Valley and of California, and deliver the results. I will have to prove myself by delivering the results. If we’re going to restore the confidence that investors have in us, and that employees have in us, we have to deliver. We have to mean what we say and say what we mean and deliver the results. And that is what I intend to deliver.

Meg, you have a lot of history managing brands. I’m thinking of the job you had managing brands for Procter & Gamble. What’s wrong and what’s right about HP’s brand right now?

Whitman: I think HP is known as the world’s largest provider of information technology, and we are a trusted brand. We are a worldwide brand that touches both consumers and businesses. If you’re an enterprise, we have full suite of solutions. I know that when I bought enterprise hardware and software at eBay, I wanted one person to choke when something went wrong. I wanted one supplier to go to and say ‘Hey, this is not working.’ And so I think we have a fabulous brand in a world where technology is increasingly fundamental. I will say — and Ray would say this as well — I think we need crisper communications with all the constituencies. I think on Aug. 18 we confused people. We didn’t mean to do that, but we did. And so I think we’ve got some work to do around communicating crisply and cleanly about what we’re about — the moves that we’re making — to employees, customers, shareholders and, frankly, to the press.

Yesterday — right after she took over the reins at Hewlett-Packard — high-profile Silicon Valley tech exec Meg Whitman and Executive Chairman Ray Lane got on the phone with me to talk about her new gig.

In the interview, which took place just before her debut — well, re-debut with investors, since she ran eBay for a decade — Lane said he approached Whitman for the job sometime after she joined the board eight months ago, because he felt she had the kind of leadership that HP needed and was lacking under now-ousted CEO Leo Apotheker.

Message No. 1 from Whitman, who is very good at delivering messages: “I took this job, because HP really matters to Silicon Valley, to California, to this country and to the world.”

And: “This is an icon and the place where the initial spark to create Silicon Valley came from and I am resolved to restore it to its rightful place.”

And: “I have the skills to do that.” Lane concurred, noting that while Apotheker had focus on defining some of HP’s goals, he lacked the operational, people and communications skills Whitman has.

“Leo was very wise about figuring out what HP needed to do to add value,” said Lane. “But he did not have more important tools we needed, including operational excellence, people skills and communications skills.”

He added: “Meg has all those things … and when we looked around the board room, we realized we had what we needed right there.”

Now that is some fancy CEO talk, for sure, which is why Whitman will surely be the most interesting leader HP has had in a long time.

And the troubled tech giant has had a lot of leaders — seven CEOs since 1999.

Whitman says she is undaunted by those odds and will focus on several major issues at first.

Those include, in the order she put them in (of course, using definitive numbers):

1) Focusing on meeting Wall Street expectations for HP for the next quarter over the next 45 days. “We have made a commitment,” she said. “And we are going to do everything possible to keep it.”

2) Integrating HP’s $10 billion acquisition of Autonomy, which was made by Apotheker. “As you know from my time at eBay, I know a lot about unstructured data and it is a market where no one is a leader except Autonomy,” Whitman said.

3) Come to a decision about whether to spin off or keep its Personal Systems Group, which includes HP’s consumer PC business. “We will not sell,” said Lane firmly.

4) Getting a better feel for HP and its employees. “I have been on the board for eight months, but I really need to get in there and meet its people,” said Whitman. “That is perhaps the most important thing to get right.”

Whitman added that after leaving eBay and her loss in a run for governor of California, she said she found she wanted to get back in the tech game.

“She won that race,” joked Lane, who perhaps is hoping HP will, since it freed up Whitman for the job.

And while she said she enjoyed her short — and brutal — political life, Whitman said she was happy to be back.

“Business is my first love,” she said. “And this is a huge opportunity that I sensed I could do well at.”

Former eBay CEO Meg Whitman is poised to be named the new CEO of Hewlett-Packard later today after the markets are closed, said multiple sources close to the situation.

The full board of HP, which is meeting today in Silicon Valley, has not officially voted on the move and the situation could certainly change, but sources said it is nearly a done deal.

AllThingsD first reported on the CEO crisis at HP yesterday.

While there has been much speculation that the well-known Silicon Valley exec would be only an interim CEO for the troubled tech giant, several sources with knowledge of the situation said that she will be taking over leadership on a long-term basis.

At least that’s the plan — HP has had seven CEOs since 1999 and its current one, Léo Apotheker, has only been in the job for 11 months.

He will be fired, of course, with a nice, big (and appalling, considering the 47 percent drop in HP stock in his tenure) severance package as a goodbye-on-your-way-out.

As I wrote earlier today about HP’s need to act soon: “That’s more corporate marriages and exec beheadings than England’s Henry VIII!”

Whitman, who is nothing if not confident, is presumably going to try to keep her head about her, even though she faces a daunting task.

“Meg is not someone who wants to be a steward of a process to find another CEO for HP,” said one source. “She wants to run the company and be a strong leader for what she considers an important tech powerhouse.”

That makes sense, since at only 55 years old, sources said Whitman is not inclined to want to do a temporary fix-it job on a company as troubled and complex as HP.

Sources said Whitman has been contemplating taking another big exec job, after a 10-year stint at eBay, which was followed by an unsuccessful run as the Republican nominee for governor of California last year. Since then, she has been a part-time consultant at top venture firm Kleiner Perkins.

Her role there — which has largely been seen as a temporary one — has included acting as a strategic adviser to start-ups and evaluating investment opportunities. Extraordinarily wealthy from her stint at eBay, she has also been active with her family foundation.

Turning to Whitman would not be a surprise, given there are few execs in tech experienced enough to run such a large and complex organization as HP.

But Whitman will face a lot of scrutiny if she takes the job running HP, which has been rocked by sudden strategic shifts and failed forecasts as its markets have gotten increasingly competitive.

The stock has been hammered, of course, but rose sharply on the news of a change in top leadership yesterday.

HP shares are down five percent today, mostly due to the turmoil in the markets at large due to more significant global economic concerns.

Also of likely concern to investors is the fact that her experience has been in the consumer arena and not the enterprise or hardware space that HP plays most strongly in.

Interestingly, Whitman has recently hired her longtime communications consigliere Henry Gomez, who worked with her at eBay and also in her unsuccessful run for governor of California, as a consultant.

Which means, of course, the likelihood of some big news to manage.

More to come, of course, and I suppose it will soon be appropriate to extend a hearty welcome back to the tech show to Whitman (whom I’ve covered since her appointment as eBay CEO back in the day).

And, of course, to remind her: Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.

Sculley’s choice would prove life-changing for both Jobs and the East Coast soda executive. He took the gamble to join Apple as its CEO, never knowing that Jobs, then 28, himself wanted the job, but had been denied it by the Apple board due to his temperamental nature and relative lack of managerial experience.

What began as a close and happy partnership degenerated into an irreparable business dispute. Jobs left Apple in 1985 only to return 12 years later after Sculley had been fired for refusing to license Apple’s operating system and subsequent management nearly bankrupted the company. Since then, Sculley has been making personal investments in private, new ventures.

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The priority-setting doesn’t mean that Yahoo’s board necessarily prefers a sale over staying independent, these people said. But the board’s sentiment is that the company needs a better handle on its strategic direction before it can settle on the right CEO, these people said.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Challenges have piled up for Page since he assumed his post in April. They include a broad U.S. antitrust probe of the company’s practices; the settlement of a long-running criminal investigation into Google’s advertising business; and shifting industry forces that led him to make a deal to buy mobile-device maker Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. Since he took on his new role, the company’s stock price has declined 9.1 percent, compared with a drop of 8.42 percent for Nasdaq stocks as a whole.

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The end of the search comes just as suddenly as it began, with Dirk Meyer’s surprise resignation in January. The search was a tough one, in no small part because AMD — whose business is already complicated by the fact that it has to compete with Intel — is widely seen as missing the boat on key new markets like mobile computing and tablets.

It’s equally surprising that there were no leaks about this hiring, though word had circulated that several A-list executives had been approached and turned the job down. Among them: Pat Gelsinger, COO of EMC and a former CTO of Intel, said no twice; both Michael Capellas, the former CEO of WorldCom and Compaq, and William Nuti, CEO of NCR, turned down AMD’s inquiries.

So, who is Rory Read? His bio at Lenovo says he led that company’s American unit to a $140 million surge in profitability in 2007, and revenue grew 14 percent on his watch. Before that, he spent 23 years at IBM — remember that Lenovo bought out IBM’s PC division for $1.75 billion in 2005.

AMD shares rose 10 cents, or more than 1.5 percent, as of 10:40 AM Eastern time.

Steve Jobs’s resignation as chief executive officer of Apple is the end of an extraordinary era, not just for Apple, but for the global technology industry in general. Jobs is a historic business figure whose impact was deeply felt far beyond the company’s Cupertino, Calif., headquarters, and who was widely emulated at other companies.

And now, for the first time since 1997, he won’t be the company’s chief executive.

To be very clear, Jobs, while seriously ill, is very much alive. Extremely well-informed sources at Apple say he intends to remain involved in developing major future products and strategy and intends to be an active chairman of the board, even while new CEO Tim Cook runs the company day to day.

So, this is not an obituary. But his health is reported to be up and down, and even an active chairman isn’t the same as a CEO.

CEOs resign every day, so why is this departure so meaningful?

Most people are lucky if they can change the world in one important way, but Jobs, in multiple stages of his business career, changed global technology, media and lifestyles in multiple ways on multiple occasions.

He did it because he was willing to take big risks on new ideas, and not be satisfied with small innovations fed by market research. He also insisted on high quality and had the guts to leave out features others found essential and to kill technologies, like the floppy drive and the removable battery, he decided were no longer needed. And he has been a brilliant marketer, personally passionate about his products.

In his first act at Apple, the company he co-founded in 1976, he helped envision and catalyze the personal computer revolution. The Apple II computer he developed with Steve Wozniak wasn’t the only mass-market PC released in 1977, but it was the one that had the most enduring impact.

In 1984, he again upended computing by leading the development of the Macintosh, the first commercially successful computer to use a mouse and graphical user interface. It cemented the template for how every computer works today, even though Apple was handily bested in the PC sales wars by archrival Microsoft.

After being forced out of Apple in 1985, it’s well known that Jobs ran an unsuccessful computer firm called NeXT. But he also did a couple of game-changing things during that exile. First, NeXT developed an operating system that later morphed into the excellent Macintosh operating system, called OS X, and also the operating system that drives Apple’s mobile devices, called iOS.

In addition, he purchased Pixar, a small computer animation firm which he was able, over years, to turn into one of the world’s most successful movie studios and later sell to Disney for billions. It changed animation forever.

In his most recent act, he returned in 1997 to take over as CEO of Apple as part of that company’s purchase of NeXT. What he found was a diminished company which was reputedly only months from bankruptcy and saddled with mediocre products.

Fourteen years later, the company is a highly profitable behemoth, the most financially valuable and influential technology company in the world, whose every product is eagerly anticipated, snapped up quickly by consumers, and aped by competitors, even though they are often priced higher than rival devices.

While CEO of the revived Apple, he introduced the dominant digital music player, the iPod, and created the most successful digital media service, iTunes. He introduced the first super-smartphone, the iPhone, and the only truly successful tablet computer, the iPad, which is in the process of replacing the laptop, at least in part. And he built the world’s largest app store.

One almost forgets that he built a phenomenally successful chain of retail stores, too.

Apple’s devices and software services have dramatically changed the mobile phone industry, the music industry, the film and TV industries, the publishing industry and others.

Meanwhile, even while declaring that we are in the “post-PC era,” Jobs resuscitated his early baby, the Mac. While it may never become the world’s biggest selling computer, it is lusted after worldwide, and its sales have outgrown those of the overall PC industry for five years running. Plus, with models like the sleek, solid-state MacBook Air, he’s actually merging the tablet and the PC.

Now, rumors are rife that Apple is working on re-inventing another common device: the TV. The secretive company won’t say a word about that, but nobody should be surprised if it happens, just based on Jobs’s track record.

And that’s why the day Steve Jobs resigns as CEO of Apple isn’t like the day a typical CEO resigns.

Here is a video of me taken recently, talking about Jobs’s career: