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Lesson #4: Stay Ahead Of The Pack

Article Overview: “Innovation is the distinction between a leader and a follower,” says Jobs.

Lesson #4: Stay Ahead Of The Pack

“Innovation is the distinction between a leader and a follower,” says Jobs.

Throughout his 30-year career, Steve has consistently proven that he is a leader and not a follower. From the Macintosh, which introduced the first graphical user interface that has since become standard, to the iPod, which has taken the music and electronics industry by storm, Jobs has demonstrated time and time again that he has the visionary ideas to keep him ahead of his competition. He has been willing to take risks and go in directions that others have not even realized are available until too late.

For Jobs, innovation has little to do with the amount of investment and capital you have available to finance new research and development. After all, Wozniak and Jobs had created the revolutionary Apple I with a budget of only $1,300. Instead, he credits the creative team behind him for his success. “When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D,” he recalls. “It's not about money. It's about the people you have, how you're led, and how much you get it."

With a reputation for being a hardnosed perfectionist, Jobs believes that having the best and the brightest workers behind him was one of his biggest success factors. “To turn really interesting ideas and fledgling technologies into a company that can continue to innovate for years, it requires a lot of disciplines,” he says. With little faith in the value of focus groups, Jobs relied on gathering small groups of people from a wide array of backgrounds to stimulate creative ideas within each other.

Back at the helm of Apple, Jobs runs a very tight and disciplined company. “The system is that there is no system,” says Jobs. But, “that doesn’t mean we don’t have process.” Process, according to Jobs, makes for greater efficiency. But, in order to encourage experimentation and innovation, Jobs tries to create an environment that nurtures a free-flow of ideas.

“Innovation comes from people meeting in the hallways or calling each other at 10:30 at night with a new idea, or because they realized something that shoots holes in how we’ve been thinking about a problem,” says Jobs. “It’s ad hoc meetings of six people called by someone who thinks he has figured out the coolest new thing ever and who wants to know what other people think of his idea.” Innovation, in other words, cannot be structured. It can be encouraged, but it must not be restricted.

Despite this, Jobs has a reputation for being tough on new ideas from his staff, typically rejecting the first idea that anyone proposes before even seriously considering it. He considers this part of the key to innovation. “It comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don’t get on the wrong track or try to do too much,” he says. “We’re always thinking about new markets we could enter, but it’s only by saying no that you can concentrate on the things that are really important.”

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Article Tags: apple, budget, creative team, distinction, electronics industry, follower, graphical user interface, innovation, ipod, mac ibm, macintosh, music, research and development, visionary ideas, wozniak and jobs



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