The summary of the interview with Steve Jobs at All Things Digital D8.
I just watched this 5 minute summary clip of an interview with Steve Jobs at D8, the eighth annual conference of All Things Digital, see also this post at TheNextWeb. In my opinion almost everything he says in this clip touches upon important principals of successful innovation and also relates to ‘the secrets’ of Apple’s success. Below I summarized what these principles are according to me and what Jobs said related to them.
Focus your resources, ride the proper technological waves
Spend your resources wisely: choose very carefully which technologies to adopt, in Job’s words, “technical vectors that have a future and that are headed up”. Some more what Job’s said about this was:
“Different pieces of technologies kind of go in cycles, they have their springs, summers and autumns … and then they go to the graveyard of technology… so we try to pick things that are in their springs”.
If you want your innovations to stay ahead of the curve and flourish in the market you need to adopt the technologies that allow you to piggy bag on its future advancements and adoption by others in market.
It will cost you an enormous amount of energy if you don’t focus, hence reducing your chance to be successful. Further, if you don’t choose carefully it can cost you a lot of effort to change the technological fundaments of your innovation. This would likely imply that you lose your position in the market you are in.
Listen but stick to your vision and convictions
Two important points in one: listen to your customers to develop your innovation and adapt it based on feedback from the market, but at the same time have a strong conviction about the why, what and how of your innovation and stick to it.
Some great quotes of Job’s about this:
“… Things [products] are packages of emphasis, some things are emphasized in a product, some things are not done as well in a product, some things are chosen not be done at all in a product and so different people make different choices: if the market says we are making wrong choices we just listen to the market … “
but …
“… We have at least the courage of our convictions to say: ‘we don’t think this is part of what makes a great product, we are going to leave it out!’ That’s what a lot of customers pay us to do: is to try to make the best products we can, and if we succeed they’ll buy it and if we don’t they won’t, and it will all work itself out!”
User-driven innovation is a very important basis for developing successful innovations. It allows you to create products and services that clearly reflect user needs and delight users by optimizing its form, functions and the way you interact with it, within the intended context of use. As an example of an intended context of use, Steve Jobs for instance exemplified one for the iPad in his introduction presentation by demonstrating it sitting in a lounge chair.
Further, developing successful innovations is a highly iterative process where you not only learn how, for instance, you can build something from a technical perspective but also what (form, function, interaction) tweaks your product or service needs for users to be ‘delighted’ about using it. This iterative learning process continuous constantly, even long after your innovation has been launched in the market.
Having that said, it’s not always possible or favorable to try to grand end-users every wish. End-users do not run your company and aren’t working daily on your innovations so they usually can’t oversee the holistic whole of the innovation: how all the aspects of the innovation make it more than the sum of its parts and why all the strategic choices are made to grow and sustain the product or service innovation in the market on the long run.
But that doesn’t have to be a problem. Even more, if you can communicate a clear vision and why you stand by your convictions, users will not only understand this, they will actually highly appreciate it and possibly identify themselves with it.
Eventually this can turn users into evangelists of which Apple, not surprisingly, has many. There are multiple aspects to Apple’s success, to me Apple’s vision and courage to stand up for their convictions is one of them.
Tags: All Things Digital, Apple, conviction, interview, principles of innovation, Steve Jobs, user-driven innovation, video, vision
