The
following are
the keys lessons to Steve Jobs success that everyone can try to emulate, as explained by Walter Isaacson in his Biography.
Focus:
Focus was en-grained in Steve Jobs’ personality and had been honed by his Zen
training.
His famous white board, When he
returned to Apple he
drew a two by two grid. At the top had two columns he wrote “consumer”
and “pro”, he labeled the two rows “desktop” and “portable.” There
job said he was
to produce four great products.
Simplify:
Jobs ability to
focus was accompanied by the related instinct to simplify things by
zeroing in on their essence.
“Simplicity
is the ultimate sophistication,” as
declared Apple’s
first marketing brochure.
Put
products before profits:If
you
Focus on
making the great products, profits will follow was Jobs’
theory. Jobs passion
was
to build an enduring company where people were motivated to make
great products. It was great to make a profit.But the products not
the profits were the motivation. The
Mac is one of the great products that changed the face of computer
industry sold with message of revolution in 1984.
Take
responsibility end to end:
Jobs
took end-to-end responsibility for the user experience, which
was driven by his passion for perfection and making elegant products. It
did not always maximize short term profits, but it led to insanely
great products.
When
behind leapfrog: An
innovative company not only comes up with new ideas but
also knows how to leapfrog when it finds itself
behind. After
the iPod became a success, Jobs began to think
about what might
endanger it. One possibility was that phone makers would begin
adding music players to their hand sets. So he protected
the iPod by
creating the iPhone. “If we don’t cannibalize ourselves,
someone else will,” Jobs
said.
Don’t
be a slave to focus groups: ,
Jobs always loved
talking about Henry
Ford’s line “if I’d asked customers what they wanted, they
would have told me, ’A faster horse!’”
Jobs’
opinion was that caring deeply about what customers want required
intuition and instinct about desires that have not yet formed. He
did not rely on
market research, he had
his own version
of empathy - intimate intuition about the desires of his customers.