Rollerblade Case

Department of Public and Business Administration

MBA Program

MBA 566.7 Leadership

Group Exercise on Persuasion

Steve Jobs’ Commencement Address at Stanford (6/2005)

Team members: Andreas Dimou

Despo Theofanous

Maria Anastasiou

Pantelis Challouma

Instructor: Panayiotou Alexia

Academic Year: 2012 - 2013

Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, wrote and delivered a commencement speech to the graduates of Stanford University on June 12 in 2005. At that time, he was at the age of 50; he died six years later, in 2011. Steve Jobs began the commencement speech by trying to make an emotional connection with the audience. This connection builds empathy, which in turn encourages his audience to be more receptive to what he has to talk about.

Steve Jobs wanted to share three stories of his life with the audience. He adopts a simple structure to present his stories in order to be easily for someone to remember. As he says, “Today, I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.” Steve clarifies from the beginning that he talks about three stories of his life. His speech made an impression because he grabbed the audience’s attention from the beginning. More specifically, he uses the traditional structure in his speech which includes opening, main body (three stories) and conclusion. Moreover, he uses simple sentences in order not to confuse the audience and more effectively transfer some important massages through his personal experiences. Some of the sentences which he uses are "The first story is about connecting the dot…The second story is about love and loss…The third story is about death". At last, we have noticed that Jobs used a mini-message at the end of each section. The reason is that people tend to forget most of the words someone says, and focus on key messages.

Steve delivers a talk that inspires because it simply tells three authentic stories from his life. He shared...