Apple CEO Steve Jobs is no stranger to accolades. At the ripe old age of 30, he—along with Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak—won the first National Medal of Technology. Most recently, he was named the most admired entrepreneur among teenagers. He is admired by geeks and businessmen alike, and his successes (and failures) with Apple, NeXT, Pixar, and Apple again fill the pages of numerous books. Given Apple's meteoric rise from near-bankruptcy in 1997 to the technology leader that everyone is trying to follow today, is it really much of a surprise that Fortune has dubbed Jobs "CEO of the Decade?"

Jobs became a wildly successful businessman in his late 20s and early 30s as Apple rose to prominence as an early leader in home computing. However, there are numerous anecdotes of his petulant behavior that ultimately resulted in his ouster from the company he helped found in 1985.