Dreams

Let's not get confused at the difference between a goal and a dream. A goal is something measurable, trackable, and is built on analytics. Goals have realistic timelines, are measured by weighing the data, the risks, and the current assets. They are essential to success, but they follow dreams. A dream is bigger--it has no boundaries, rules, or past history. It's focused on transforming business as we know it, and approaching from a direction never pursued--or at least never attained. In dreams, we seek the outstanding change--not just within the products we create but in the results those products inspire....

The iPod team is exemplary of all of the traits of breakthrough teams that we've discussed; the skills of each personally competent team member fit together perfectly. They were all steeped with experience. It was technical savvy meeting creative brilliance. It was a combination of past successes meets past failures. It was a group of men who recognized their individual strengths, but had also gained a thorough understanding that they could not achieve the dream unless they realized the strengths of one another.

....They needed to create something small enough to fit into the tiny casing, but powerful enough to maintain a charge that would oversatisfy users....

Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton, "How a Team at Apple Made the iPod Dream a Reality," Fast Company, 4 Oct 2010, www.fastcompany.com/article/how-a-team-at-apple-made-the-ipod-dream-a-reality via Rich Goade

It’s nice to work with it instead of fighting it.

“It still comes down to a ridiculous amount of work,” said Mr. Powers. “But it’s really nice when the new computer software is so streamlined. It’s nice to work with it instead of fighting it.”

Peter Wayner, "Animation in Starts and Stops, Simplified," New York Times, 20 Oct 2010, www.nytimes.com/2010/10/21/technology/personaltech/21basics.html.

A snappy user experience beats a glamorous one

A snappy user experience beats a glamorous one, for the simple reason that people engage more with a site when they can move freely and focus on the content instead of on their endless wait.

Jakob Nielsen, "Website Response Times," Useit.com, 21 June 2010, www.useit.com/alertbox/response-times.html via Rich Goade & North Temple

larded with features

Although many of these illustrated fantasies are quite beautiful, and some are uncannily realistic, their fatal flaw is often the same. They're larded with features. Apple is about less (those six ports on the MacBook Touch should have been a dead giveaway that this wasn't an Apple product). Even Gecchelin concedes, "This is not the Apple philosophy."

Jobs's primary role at Apple is to turn things down. "He's a filter," says the Mac engineer Hertzfeld. Every day, the CEO is presented with ideas for new products and new features within existing ones. The default answer is no. Every engineer who has gone over a product with him has a story about how quickly Jobs reaches for the DELETE key. "I'm as proud of the products that we have not done as the ones we have done," Jobs told an interviewer in 2004.

Farhad Manjoo, "Invincible Apple: 10 Lessons From the Coolest Company Anywhere", Fast Company, 1 July 2010, www.fastcompany.com/magazine/147/apple-nation.html via Rich Goade.

We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint

“It’s dangerous because it can create the illusion of understanding and the illusion of control,” General McMaster said in a telephone interview afterward. “Some problems in the world are not bullet-izable.”

Elisabeth Bumiller, "We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint," New York Times, 26 Apr 2010, www.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/world/27powerpoint.html.

knowing which ones to keep

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.

- Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert

via a Hannah facebook post

strategic plan

We have a strategic plan, it’s called doing things.

- Herb Kelleher, Southwest Airlines

via a Rich Goade tweet

no matter how hard it is, you better get good at those things

To be built to transform requires the courage to focus on delivering value for the customer first. Identifying value begins by thinking of an important unserved or underserved job that customers want done and then coming up with a well-defined value proposition to address that job, however foreign to your current offerings that may be. "If you want to continuously revitalize the service that you offer to your customers, you cannot stop at what you are good at," says CEO Jeff Bezos. "You have to ask what your customers need and want, and then, no matter how hard it is, you better get good at those things." With a well-defined customer value proposition serving a focused, well-articulated job, business leaders and project teams can work together to design the appropriate profit formulas, key resources, and key processes the company needs to thrive.

Mark W. Johnson, "Amazon's Smart Innovation Strategy," BusinessWeek, 12 April 2010, www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/apr2010/id20100412_520351.htm.

it's the things that are not there that we are most proud of

I put to designer Ive the matter of all the features that are missing from the iPad. "In many ways, it's the things that are not there that we are most proud of," he tells me. "For us, it is all about refining and refining until it seems like there's nothing between the user and the content they are interacting with.

Stephen Fry, "The iPad Launch: Can Steve Jobs Do It Again?" Time.com, 1 Apr 2010, www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1976935-3,00.html

If you blindly follow the research, you'll lose

In a 2001 column, World magazine publisher Joel Belz called relying too much on research "the fallacy of false precision." Precision is what Ford was seeking when it famously passed on launching the minivan. Hal Sperlich, who ended up taking the concept to Chrysler, recounted in a 1994 Fortune article that Ford balked because research couldn't prove there was a market for such an unprecedented vehicle. "In 10 years of developing the minivan we never once got a letter from a housewife asking us to invent one." Call it a hunch, call it intuition or insight, call it whatever—Sperlich and his team were correct, regardless of what the research said (or didn't say).

As is animated movie studio Pixar, time after time, as it churns out one hit after another. Andrew Stanton, director of WALL-E, admitted in a 2008 Wall Street Journalcolumn, "We selfishly make movies for ourselves that happen to be juvenile enough that they cover the kids' interests. We've learned to trust our own instincts about what we like and not rely on, or trust, what the outside world tells us is going to work." Apple's Steve Jobs is cut from the same cloth."We do no market research," Jobs told Fortune in a 2008 interview. "We just want to make great products." I think he has proven his approach works.

Market research is a compass, not a map—it can give you a sense of where you are, but it can't tell you where to go. Measure to guide, don't measure to lead, and when you do talk to customers, remember you can't always go through the front door—sometimes you have to sneak in through a window to find out what they really think. Figuratively speaking, of course.

Steve McKee, "The Perils of Market Research," BusinessWeek, 12 Mar 2010,
www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/mar2010/sb20100312_705320.htm.

he has made shipping new products an art form

Great execution is every bit as important to innovation as empathy and creativity are. Now is the time to bring ideas to life faster. To make changes that let great things happen. To develop a bias for action. As Stanford University engineering professor Jim Adams once noted, 'Good companies reward success, punish failure, and ignore inaction. Great companies reward success and failure and punish inaction.' Since Steve Jobs returned as Apple's CEO in 1997, the company has been celebrated for its design-driven approach to innovation. What's rarely discussed is the well-oiled execution machine that gets Apple's products out the door. Soon after his arrival, Jobs unleashed operations whiz Tim Cook on Apple's troubled supply chain. For years, Apple struggled to clear out older models. Cook reduced Apple's inventory from 54 days to less than a day, going from near-worst in the industry to leaner than cost-leader Dell. Fixing the supply chain and slashing nonessential businesses freed up resources for new ideas, such as the iPhone and the iPad. Steve Jobs is renowned for saying that 'real artists ship.' And he has made shipping new products an art form."

Dev Patnaik, "The Fundamentals of Innovation," BusinessWeek, 10 Feb 2010,
www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/feb2010/id2010028_823268_page_2.htm.

heuristic

Note: The nature of a heuristic is that it stops short of an absolute rule; it gives us a better shot at success but doesn't guarantee it. A heuristic is well enough formed to allow us to act on it, but may not be clear enough that we can fully articulate it to ourselves or others. And that may well be where the breakdown between the Weinsteins and Disney took place. Harvey didn't have an algorithm, a sure-fire mechanism for success. And as time went on, other studios copied the approach, diminishing the appearance of Harvey's unique vision.

Roger Martin and Jennifer Riel, "The 'Inglourious' Decline of Miramax Films," BusinessWeek, 4 Mar 2010, www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/mar2010/id2010034_725045.htm .

patterns

5:20 - A vision of something which can be, which may be, based on knowledge, but is as yet unproven... It comes down to four basic principles:

• Learn from everyone
• Follow no one
• Watch for patterns
• Work like hell

"Scott McCloud on comics," video on TED.com, TED 2005, filmed Feb 2005, posted Jan 2009, www.ted.com/talks/scott_mccloud_on_comics.html via Ty Hatch

Simplicity sells

A few quotes from a TED talk by David Pogue:

06:44 - The software upgrade paradox - If you improve a piece of software enough times, you eventually ruin it.

20:41 - This cult of doing things right is starting to spread.

20:57 - If you are among the people who create this stuff: Easy is hard. Pre-sweat the details for your audience. Count the taps. Remember the hard part is not deciding what features to add, it is deciding what to leave out. And best of all your motivation is simplicity sells.

"David Pogue says 'Simplicity sells'," Video on TED.com, TED 2006, posted June 2006, www.ted.com/talks/david_pogue_says_simplicity_sells.html.

That's the magic

Q: Is there a chance of hubris creeping into the company?

A: People are our number one asset, and the executive team spends a lot of time thinking about recruiting and retaining great talent. We've said no to a lot of good products, great products even, in order to remain focused. That focus is so ingrained that the management team would never let hubris take hold. That's not what we're about. Focus on people and ensure that it's a small list of things to work on. That's the magic behind us.

Eric Slivka, “Apple COO Tim Cook Speaks at Goldman Sachs Conference,” Mac Rumors, 23 Feb 2010, www.macrumors.com/2010/02/23/apple-coo-tim-cook-speaks-at-goldman-sachs-conference/ via Rich Goade.

most failures are ignored

The problem with science, then, isn’t that most experiments fail — it’s that most failures are ignored.

Jonah Lehrer, "Accept Defeat: The Neuroscience of Screwing Up," Wired, Jan 2010, www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/fail_accept_defeat via Rich Goade.

what should we do?

Now that we can do anything, what should we do?

Bill Buxton quotesondesign.com/bill-buxton or datadaylife.com/2010/01/bill-buxton-on-natural-user-interfaces

design restraint

At Apple, there is a similar link between the ultimate design-team leader, Mr. Jobs, and the products. From computers to smartphones, Apple products are known for being stylish, powerful and pleasing to use. They are edited products that cut through complexity, by consciously leaving things out — not cramming every feature that came into an engineer’s head, an affliction known as “featuritis” that burdens so many technology products.

"A defining quality of Apple has been design restraint,” says Paul Saffo, a technology forecaster and consultant in Silicon Valley.

Steve Lohr, "Steve Jobs and the Economics of Elitism," New York Times, 29 Jan 2010, www.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/weekinreview/31lohr.html