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In most other environments, Jobs would fail badly. See Apple 1.0 (gasp! people weren't willing to pay $6999+ for a Lisa or a Mac II?!?) and NeXT. He's succeeded at Apple 2.0 for two reasons. First was luck. Tech prices came down and the economy grew enough that people were willing and able to pay a premium for superior products (and likewise because of the drop, the perceived cost differences were minimized. Second, Apple 1.0 and it's dwindling but loyal ecosystem were desperate for a savior figure and longed for (and have gratefully embraced) a dictatorial style of management.
Job's style can work well in startups and small, nimble organizations. It generally fails miserably in larger organizations. It is unquestionably an exception to the rule that he's succeeded in a company as large as Apple. And honestly from a shareholder perspective, he's still not coming close to maximizing potential profits (which served it well for quite some time because it kept them from seeming to be a real threat to the powerful establishment). It works in this one case, but I can't think of too many other places where it would work as well or at all. Picture him in charge of IBM or HP and likely you'd see a picture of an implosion. Way too large and diverse. You can micromanage and tantrum your way around maybe 10 to 20 product lines, but try that with hundreds (as is the case with most any other company Apple's size or larger) and you'd see stagnation and, at best, an attempt to contract to a company like Apple focusing on 10 to 20 major products. In some ways that might be good, but short-term shareholder pain would remove him from power well before we'd see any sense of success.
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