As a market analyst, you tend to dismiss the impact of lone individuals. Instead, you point to the big, the collective, the macro. Generations, industries, cycles — these are the things that change our lives and impact millions and billions of individuals, that create change felt the world over.

But all good analysts realize that sometimes, just sometimes, that assumption needs to be reassessed. Maybe because a remarkable event of nature occurs or a game-changing innovation emerges. Perhaps it’s a disruptive force in the market that no one saw coming. Or maybe it’s all three.

Steve Jobs was all three.

Unlike anyone else in modern business today, Jobs changed people’s lives. He was a literal force that swept across the landscape of modern humanity. It’s hard to fathom, really, how one man could single-handedly change the way business operates and innovates; the way consumers interact with one another through work, school or at play; and how the face of technology will look from here and ever after. But that’s exactly what he did.

In other words, he forced an entire generation of people to revisit their assumptions, check their spreadsheets and re-round their numbers. Jobs made us all realize that one person can, in fact, bring monumental change, can change life, and for that we are all thankful.