One of the men who helped build today’s technological world, in which it is possible to use a cellphone for activities such as betting on ice hockey, resolving banking issues, and signing documents digitally, was certainly Steve Jobs.
A creative genius, Jobs was also a straightforward man who knew how to talk about management and product development without resorting to empty clichés. In his words, one could feel the sincerity of someone who connected ideas from his experience, without trying to emulate concepts found in best-sellers.
And one of his most epic responses occurred at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, held in 1997, shortly after Jobs returned to the company from which he had been ousted.
Nearly 30 years after that event, the response still resonates around the world and has helped many entrepreneurs understand important points for managing a company.
Question
Well, during the conference, a developer asked to speak to pose a question to Jobs – and began with a compliment: “Mr. Jobs, you are a brilliant and influential man,” the man said. Sensing the tone of the speech, Steve Jobs humorously retorted: “Here it comes.”
And indeed, the follow-up to the question was an attempt to criticize Jobs and put him on the spot. This is because, upon his return to Apple, Steve Jobs halted several ongoing projects to give the company a new direction.
“It’s sad and clear that, on several topics you’ve discussed, you don’t know what you’re talking about. I would like, for example, for you to express in clear terms how, say, Java, in any of its incarnations, addresses the ideas embedded in OpenDoc. And when you’re done, perhaps you can tell us what you’ve personally been doing for the last seven years,” fired the developer.
The Response
Little did he know that he would help give rise to one of the most interesting responses in the realm of entrepreneurship.
After being hit point-blank by the question, Steve Jobs, holding his traditional bottle of water, stood for a moment with his head down, thinking. Many thought he had felt the blow, but the creator of Apple was just piecing together a response that would become epic.
“One of the hardest things when you’re trying to promote change is that people like this gentleman are right in some areas,” Jobs began, before launching into his lesson on strategic vision.
He then acknowledged that OpenDoc is probably capable of doing things that no other program could, but then he raises some points.
“The hardest thing is: how does this fit into a cohesive and broader vision that will allow selling $8 billion, $10 billion per product per year?” Jobs asked.
In other words, according to the founder of Apple, having good ideas in isolation doesn’t help if they don’t fit into a cohesive and strategic vision of what the company intends to sell.
“One of the things I’ve always believed is that you need to start with the customer experience and work backward to the technology. You can’t start with the technology and then try to figure out where you’re going to sell it,” Steve Jobs taught.
He also mentioned that he probably made this mistake more times than anyone else in the audience. And then he said he knew that was what was happening at Apple at the time of his return.
“As we try to create a strategy and a vision for Apple, we start with what incredible benefits we can give the customer, where we can take them. Not starting with: ‘Let’s sit down with the engineers and figure out what incredible technology we have and how we are going to market it,’” he added.
“Mistakes Will Be Made”
Finally, Steve Jobs expressed solidarity with the people who had been working on OpenDoc and other projects that were canceled, but stated that the entire Apple team is working hard to ensure that the new strategic vision brings results.
“And, by the way, some mistakes will be made. Some mistakes will be made along the way. That’s good because at least some decisions are being made along the way. And we will find the mistakes and fix them,” Jobs concluded.
Strategic Vision Saved Apple
Jobs’ strategic vision and his courage to cancel various projects that lacked unity were what saved Apple from bankruptcy and transformed it into one of the largest companies in the world.
Several years later, the bitten apple company would forever revolutionize the world we live in by launching the iPhone and initiating the era of smartphones, which simplified everyone’s life in a dimension that is very difficult to quantify.