What Would Steve Jobs Do? How the Steve Jobs Way Can Inspire Anyone to Think Differently and Win by Peter Sander Page B
Authors: Peter Sander
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commercial success. Steve Jobs supplied the vision, and the rest is history.
Meanwhile, scores of individuals have good ideas, too. They may come up with them deliberately, or they may have them quite by accident. They may be by-products of other ideas. But do they ever get to market?
To get a patent, an idea must be original, must do something useful, and must be nonobvious. But does it have to sell? Does it have to sell profitably? Does it have to be marketable? Does it have to make lives better? Does it have to be noticed by the public? No, not at all.
That’s the difference. Inventions, on their own, may be creative, but still not move the needle. Successful companies
innovate
. They create products; they integrate technologies into things that people
want to buy
. Really good innovations aren’t just products; they are game-changing
solutions
to customer problems, like air conditioning, internal combustion engines, or even those colorful little candies that melt in your mouth, not in your hand—M&Ms.
I will define innovation in a way that probably would have made sense to Steve Jobs:
----
Innovation is an invention with a customer and a marketable vision in mind.
----
To qualify as an innovation, an invention must be marketable. It must be noticeable, and it must be noticed. It must have true
value
; that is, it must be worth more to customers than they have to pay for it. And, importantly, it must be profitable to the company. The vast majority of inventions fail these tests. A few pass it, but not by enough to really move the needle. Can you remember the “what’s new” about the latest PC or MP3 player or printer introduced by an Apple competitor?
And some innovations, like the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad, have become synonymous with the term.
----
THE JAPANESE APPROACH
Success and Excellence, but No Vision
One can also look at the Japanese to understand the role that vision plays in innovation. As a rule, the Japanese understand customers, but they focus on mainstream customers, and they look for incremental improvements in the existing experience. They don’t connect the customer experience with a vision for how it could change, only how it could be better within the confines and channels of the current product. They do a very good job at that, perhaps better than anyone else in the world.
But, with a few exceptions like the Sony Walkman, they don’t define new product concepts or new markets. They stop short of being innovators. They fail to “think different”; their visions tend not to go very far ahead—like into the digital era with Walkman. Are they successful? Yes. But one can only imagine what they could do with a visionary leader like Steve Jobs in charge.
----
W HAT I S A V ISIONARY ?
Just as most Apple products introduced since Steve Jobs’s 1997 return are considered to exemplify innovations, Steve Jobs himself was often considered to be synonymous with the term “visionary.” I’ll spend a few minutes on the term “visionary,” as that is one of the best ways to capture what a vision is, why it’s important, and how you can develop your vision skills as a leader—even if you aren’t a visionary yourself.
The term “visionary” is thrown around rather loosely at times. Occasionally it comes up in a negative sense; in fact, some dictionary definitions focus on the notion of a “dreamer,” someone who has visions or dreams that really aren’t practical, let alone marketable. Someone with good ideas who can’t get anything done.
I think we can discard that concept of a visionary, at least as it applies to Steve Jobs and Apple. Here are the best two definitions I found for the word “visionary.”
• A person of strong and creative imaginative power and, often, the ability to inspire others (
Webster’s New World College Dictionary
)
• A person with a clear, distinctive, and specific vision of the future, usually connected with advances in
Meanwhile, scores of individuals have good ideas, too. They may come up with them deliberately, or they may have them quite by accident. They may be by-products of other ideas. But do they ever get to market?
To get a patent, an idea must be original, must do something useful, and must be nonobvious. But does it have to sell? Does it have to sell profitably? Does it have to be marketable? Does it have to make lives better? Does it have to be noticed by the public? No, not at all.
That’s the difference. Inventions, on their own, may be creative, but still not move the needle. Successful companies
innovate
. They create products; they integrate technologies into things that people
want to buy
. Really good innovations aren’t just products; they are game-changing
solutions
to customer problems, like air conditioning, internal combustion engines, or even those colorful little candies that melt in your mouth, not in your hand—M&Ms.
I will define innovation in a way that probably would have made sense to Steve Jobs:
----
Innovation is an invention with a customer and a marketable vision in mind.
----
To qualify as an innovation, an invention must be marketable. It must be noticeable, and it must be noticed. It must have true
value
; that is, it must be worth more to customers than they have to pay for it. And, importantly, it must be profitable to the company. The vast majority of inventions fail these tests. A few pass it, but not by enough to really move the needle. Can you remember the “what’s new” about the latest PC or MP3 player or printer introduced by an Apple competitor?
And some innovations, like the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad, have become synonymous with the term.
----
THE JAPANESE APPROACH
Success and Excellence, but No Vision
One can also look at the Japanese to understand the role that vision plays in innovation. As a rule, the Japanese understand customers, but they focus on mainstream customers, and they look for incremental improvements in the existing experience. They don’t connect the customer experience with a vision for how it could change, only how it could be better within the confines and channels of the current product. They do a very good job at that, perhaps better than anyone else in the world.
But, with a few exceptions like the Sony Walkman, they don’t define new product concepts or new markets. They stop short of being innovators. They fail to “think different”; their visions tend not to go very far ahead—like into the digital era with Walkman. Are they successful? Yes. But one can only imagine what they could do with a visionary leader like Steve Jobs in charge.
----
W HAT I S A V ISIONARY ?
Just as most Apple products introduced since Steve Jobs’s 1997 return are considered to exemplify innovations, Steve Jobs himself was often considered to be synonymous with the term “visionary.” I’ll spend a few minutes on the term “visionary,” as that is one of the best ways to capture what a vision is, why it’s important, and how you can develop your vision skills as a leader—even if you aren’t a visionary yourself.
The term “visionary” is thrown around rather loosely at times. Occasionally it comes up in a negative sense; in fact, some dictionary definitions focus on the notion of a “dreamer,” someone who has visions or dreams that really aren’t practical, let alone marketable. Someone with good ideas who can’t get anything done.
I think we can discard that concept of a visionary, at least as it applies to Steve Jobs and Apple. Here are the best two definitions I found for the word “visionary.”
• A person of strong and creative imaginative power and, often, the ability to inspire others (
Webster’s New World College Dictionary
)
• A person with a clear, distinctive, and specific vision of the future, usually connected with advances in
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