Although most of those innovations occurred after 1998, when Apple was under Steve Jobs's leadership, there was a 12-year period in which Jobs was not in charge.The company's ongoing stated strategy had been to leverage "its unique ability to design and develop its own operations system, hardware, application software, and services to provide its customers new products and solutions with superior ease-of-use, seamless integration and innovative industrial design. This strategy required not only product design and marketing expertise but also scrupulous attention to operational details. Given Apple's global growth in multiple product categories, and the associated complexity in strategic execution, would the potential loss of one man be sufficient to prevent the company from sustaining its competitive advantage? Was Steve Jobs essential to Apple’s success?