17. What I Learned From Steve Jobs
Many people have explained what one can
learn from Steve Jobs. But few, if any, of
these people have been inside the tent and
experienced first hand what it was like to
work with him. I don’t want any lessons to
be lost or forgotten, so here is my list of the
top twelve lessons that I learned from Steve
Jobs.
By Guy Kawasaki
Takayuki Yamazaki
18. 1. Experts are clueless.
Experts—journalists, analysts, consultants, bankers, and gurus
can’t “do” so they “advise.” They can tell you what is wrong
with your product, but they cannot make a great one. They can
tell you how to sell something, but they cannot sell it
themselves. They can tell you how to create great teams, but
they only manage a secretary. For example, the experts told us
that the two biggest shortcomings of Macintosh in the mid
1980s was the lack of a daisy-wheel printer driver and Lotus
1-2-3; another advice gem from the experts was to buy
Compaq. Hear what experts say, but don’t always listen to
them.
Takayuki Yamazaki
19. 2. Customers cannot tell you what they need.
“Apple market research” is an oxymoron. The Apple focus
group was the right hemisphere of Steve’s brain talking to the
left one. If you ask customers what they want, they will tell
you, “Better, faster, and cheaper”—that is, better sameness,
not revolutionary change. They can only describe their desires
in terms of what they are already using—around the time of
the introduction of Macintosh, all people said they wanted was
better, faster, and cheaper MS-DOS machines. The richest vein
for tech startups is creating the product that you want to use—
that’s what Steve and Woz did.
Takayuki Yamazaki
20. 3. Jump to the next curve.
Big wins happen when you go beyond better sameness. The
best daisy-wheel printer companies were introducing new
fonts in more sizes. Apple introduced the next curve: laser
printing. Think of ice harvesters, ice factories, and refrigerator
companies. Ice 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0. Are you still harvesting ice
during the winter from a frozen pond?
Takayuki Yamazaki
21. 4. The biggest challenges beget best work.
I lived in fear that Steve would tell me that I, or my work, was
crap. In public. This fear was a big challenge. Competing with
IBM and then Microsoft was a big challenge. Changing the
world was a big challenge. I, and Apple employees before me
and after me, did their best work because we had to do our
best work to meet the big challenges.
Takayuki Yamazaki
22. 5. Design counts.
Steve drove people nuts with his design demands—some
shades of black weren’t black enough. Mere mortals think that
black is black, and that a trash can is a trash can. Steve was
such a perfectionist—a perfectionist Beyond: Thunderdome —
and lo and behold he was right: some people care about design
and many people at least sense it. Maybe not everyone, but the
important ones.
Takayuki Yamazaki
23. 6. You can’t go wrong with big graphics and big fonts.
Take a look at Steve’s slides. The font is sixty points. There’s
usually one big screenshot or graphic. Look at other tech
speaker’s slides—even the ones who have seen Steve in action.
The font is eight points, and there are no graphics. So many
people say that Steve was the world’s greatest product
introduction guy..don’t you wonder why more people don’t
copy his style?
Takayuki Yamazaki
24. 7. Changing your mind is a sign of intelligence.
When Apple first shipped the iPhone there was no such thing
as apps. Apps, Steve decreed, were a bad thing because you
never know what they could be doing to your phone. Safari
web apps were the way to go until six months later when Steve
decided, or someone convinced Steve, that apps were the way
to go—but of course. Duh! Apple came a long way in a short
time from Safari web apps to “there’s an app for that.”
Takayuki Yamazaki
25. 8. “Value” is different from “price.”
Woe unto you if you decide everything based on price. Even
more woe unto you if you compete solely on price. Price is not
all that matters—what is important, at least to some people, is
value. And value takes into account training, support, and the
intrinsic joy of using the best tool that’s made. It’s pretty safe
to say that no one buys Apple products because of their low
price.
Takayuki Yamazaki
26. 9. A players hire A+ players.
Actually, Steve believed that A players hire A players—that is
people who are as good as they are. I refined this slightly—my
theory is that A players hire people even better than
themselves. It’s clear, though, that B players hire C players so
they can feel superior to them, and C players hire D players. If
you start hiring B players, expect what Steve called “the bozo
explosion” to happen in your organization.
Takayuki Yamazaki
27. 10. Real CEOs demo.
Steve Jobs could demo a pod, pad, phone, and Mac two to
three times a year with millions of people watching, why is it
that many CEOs call upon their vice-president of engineering to
do a product demo? Maybe it’s to show that there’s a team
effort in play. Maybe. It’s more likely that the CEO doesn’t
understand what his/her company is making well enough to
explain it. How pathetic is that?
Takayuki Yamazaki
28. 11. Real CEOs ship.
For all his perfectionism, Steve could ship. Maybe the product
wasn’t perfect every time, but it was almost always great
enough to go. The lesson is that Steve wasn’t tinkering for the
sake of tinkering—he had a goal: shipping and achieving
worldwide domination of existing markets or creation of new
markets. Apple is an engineering-centric company, not a
research-centric one. Which would you rather be: Apple or
Xerox PARC?
Takayuki Yamazaki
29. 12. Marketing boils down to providing unique value.
Think of a 2 x 2 matrix. The vertical axis measures how your
product differs from the competition. The horizontal axis
measures the value of your product. Bottom right: valuable but
not unique—you’ll have to compete on price. Top left: unique
but not valuable—you’ll own a market that doesn’t exist.
Bottom left: not unique and not value—you’re a bozo. Top
right: unique and valuable—this is where you make margin,
money, and history. For example, the iPod was unique and
valuable because it was the only way to legally, inexpensively,
and easily download music from the six biggest record labels.
Takayuki Yamazaki
30. Some things need to be believed to be seen.
When you are jumping curves, defying/ignoring the experts,
facing off against big challenges, obsessing about design, and
focusing on unique value, you will need to convince people to
believe in what you are doing in order to see your efforts come
to fruition. People needed to believe in Macintosh to see it
become real. Ditto for iPod, iPhone, and iPad. Not everyone will
believe—that’s okay. But the starting point of changing the
world is changing a few minds. This is the greatest lesson of all
that I learned from Steve.
Takayuki Yamazaki
31. Thanks for viewing my SlideShare.
Plant Many Seeds.
Let a Hundred Flowers Blossom.
Takayuki Yamazaki