the technologists would reach back

Lasseter was learning: If he reached out to the technologists, the technologists would reach back.

....

As the work progressed, one of the team members...voiced concern about lasseter's color choices. Lasseter wanted purple leaves on the trees. Leves aren't purple, the staffer objected. Indeed, the group had been studying magazine photos of trees for reference and they seemed to back up this observation.

Rather than simply asserting his artistic authority, Lasseter took the group to a San Francisco museum exhibit of paintings by the illustrator Maxfield Parrish, noted for his rich use of light in natural scenes. After a while, the dissenter volunteered that Lasseter was right: Leaves could be purple. It all depende on the light. Lasseter had showed the group that there was more to realism than was dreamt of in their technical papers.

David A. Price, The Pixar Touch: The Making of a Company, Vintage Books, 2009, p. 56.

Money is fiction

Five reporters stumbled on what seems like a basic question: What is money? The unsettling answer they found: Money is fiction.

"The Invention of Money," This American Life, Episode 423, aired 7 Jan 2011, www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/423/the-invention-of-money.

we found the answer in simplicity

After hundreds of explorations, we found the answer in simplicity...

Now to the actual result: This is a fantastic, confident evolution. If you look at the image of the coffee cups above you realize how clunky the old logo was and just how extraneous its many elements were. It went from four circles/rings to one. It went from two colors to one. It went from three stars to one. Perfect simplification without losing the essence of the brand. That new cup design alone elevates the identity to an actual lifestyle brand more than a retail brand. It has a newfound sophistication that would have been impossible to achieve before.

Armin, "All right Mr. Schultz, I’m Ready for my Close-up," Brand New, underconsideration.com, 6 Jan 2011, www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/archives/all_right_mr_schultz_im_ready_for_my_close-up.php via Rich Goade.

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