Steve Jobs

Apple was about ninety days from running out of cash, by Jobs's own later account, when he returned in 1997. The concrete moves are what matter here: cutting the product range to four computers, a 150 million dollar investment and software deal with Microsoft, and the iMac in 1998, which returned it to profit. The iPod and iPhone came later, and the operational turnaround owed much to Tim Cook, hired in 1998 to fix the supply chain.