Last year, Fortune named Jobs as the best CEO of the decade, saying that "if an entrepreneur can reshape any market, it is a lifetime achievement, such as Henry Ford's reform of automobile production process. However, he can change four existing markets at the same time, and Jobs is the first person in history.
How did he do all this? With what wisdom does he continue to create Apple legends?
Recently, Bloomberg TV broadcasted a biographical film of Jobs, and Cult of Mac, a famous foreign Apple information website, also had an exclusive interview with john sculley, the former CEO of Apple.
John sculli spoke openly about Jobs for the first time since he left Apple. The whole interview gave Jobs great praise, and shared the secret of Jobs creating great products with his own experience, which he called "Jobs Methodology". He admitted that during his tenure as CEO of Apple, all the design ideas were Jobs'. "All Apple products during my tenure were attributed to Jobs."
Based on user experience
When I first met Steve Jobs 25 years ago, he followed the same first principle, which I called "How to create a great product Steve? Jobs methodology. " Jobs always liked beautiful products, especially hardware. Every time he comes to my house, he is fascinated because I have some special locks. I once studied industrial design, and it was industrial design that linked me to work, not computers. At that time, I knew nothing about computers, and few people in the world did. At the beginning of the personal computer revolution, we were all full of confidence in beautiful design. In particular, Jobs felt that design must start from the commanding heights of user experience.
He always looks at problems from the perspective of user experience. Now most product marketers will go outside to do consumer surveys and ask passers-by "what do you need". Unlike them, Jobs didn't believe in this method. He said, "If people don't know what a graphics-based computer is, how can I ask them what kind of graphics-based computer they want?" No one has ever seen such a computer. He thinks that showing people calculators will not help them imagine future computers. Because it will be a leap.
Steve insists on starting with the user experience, and industrial design is a very important part of the user's impression. At the beginning, he recruited me to join Apple because he believed that computers would eventually become consumer goods, which was a ridiculous idea in the early 1980s. At that time, people thought that personal computers were just miniature versions of large computers. That's what IBM thinks. Some people think that personal computers are more like game consoles. At that time, simple game consoles with simple TV connections appeared. But Steve thinks differently. He thinks that the computer will change the world, become what he calls a "bicycle of thought", and provide people with amazing functions that they have never thought of. This is not a game machine, nor is it a large computer that simply becomes smaller. ...
I still remember when Steve and I went to see edwin land, the co-founder of Polaroid, and Dr. Rand was one of his idols. At that time, Dr. Rand was eliminated by Polaroid. He has his own laboratory in Cambridge. It was a pleasant afternoon, and we sat in the big conference room, and there was no one above the conference table. Dr. Rand and Steve stared at the center of the table throughout the conversation. Dr. Rand said: "I can outline what a Polaroid camera looks like. It is so real that it seems to have appeared in front of me before I made it. " Then Jobs said, "Yes, I feel the same way about the Macintosh."
Both of them have the specialty of discovering products rather than inventing them. It is said that the product has always been available, but no one can find it. Polaroid cameras have always existed, and so has Macintosh. It's just a question of when they are discovered.
Pursue the ultimate perfection
Jobs has great judgment on the future, and he also pursues the accuracy of every step. He is methodical, careful and perfect. The difference between Jobs methodology and others is that he always thinks that the most important decision you make is not what you want to do, but what you decide not to do. He is a minimalist.
I remember that Jobs had almost no furniture at home. There is only a picture of Einstein, a Tiffany lamp, a bed and a chair that he appreciates very much. He doesn't advocate owning a lot of things, and once he chooses, take good care of it. Just as he is careful of apples. This is Steve Jobs. From the user experience, he thinks that industrial design should give people the feeling of playing with jewelry, not playing with technical products.
When Macintosh first appeared in front of me, it was just a series of parts on a test circuit board, but Jobs only had the ability to find the smartest person he thought to support him. He is very attractive. He can persuade people to cooperate with him, and even before he develops a product, he can make people trust him. When I first met him, the Mac development team was very small, with an average age of 22. When I saw the Mac team again, they had grown to 100.
These people have obviously never made commercial products before, but they believe in Jobs and his vision. He can coordinate his work on many levels. The first of these levels is "changing the world"; The other level is actually to make exquisite products, design software, hardware, systems, and peripheral related accessories. Every time he develops, he collects the best talents he can find in this field and recruits the development team himself, never letting others be responsible for the recruitment.
One more thing about Jobs, he has no feeling about big institutions. He thinks those organizations are full of bureaucracy and inefficiency. He called the organization he didn't like "an idiot". Jobs had a principle that the Mac team would never exceed 100. So, if you want to add new members, it means someone will quit. This is typical of Jobs: "I can't remember the names of employees other than 100. I just want to talk to people I know." . So if it exceeds 100 people, it will become a different organizational form, and I can't work. My favorite way of working is that I can take care of all aspects. "
When I was working at Apple, he also divided the departments in this way. Steve might say, "Organizations can grow, but Mac teams can't." The Macintosh team was established as a product development department. Apple has a centralized sales department, a centralized management and legal department, and a centralized manufacturing department, but there is no actual department dedicated to developing a certain product.
This is a fact in the field of high-tech products, not that many people have to develop good products. Generally speaking, you can only see a few engineers developing an operating system. People may think that hundreds of people should develop an operating system together, but it is not. This is like an artist's studio. Jobs is a master of art. He looks at and judges other people's works, and his judgments are mostly negative.
I remember countless nights, we worked until morning 12 or 1, because the engineers didn't show up until after lunch, and then worked until late at night. An engineer will show Jobs the software code he just wrote. Jobs looked at it, threw it back to him and said, "Not yet."
He has been constantly forcing everyone to improve their self-expectation. Most of the reasons why developers can make great works beyond imagination are that Jobs inspires everyone with high charm and makes them feel how great they are. On the other hand, he cruelly rejected everyone's work until he thought the product had reached a perfect level. This is what he wants from Macintosh computers.
Steve is very organized. He always keeps a whiteboard in his office. He has no expertise in painting, but he has extraordinary taste.
This is the difference between Jobs and others, such as Bill? Gates. Bill is also a genius, but he has never been interested in high taste. He is always more interested in how to occupy the market. Jobs never did this. Jobs pursued perfection. He is willing to seize any opportunity to try new products, but always from the perspective of designers.
There are many great CEOs, some of them are magical financial experts, some are witty transaction negotiators, and some are inspiring motivators, but Jobs is an extraordinary designer. Everything about Apple can be interpreted through design.
Last year, a friend of mine went to Apple and Microsoft on the same day. He advanced into Apple's conference room, and then Apple's designers also entered the conference room. Everyone stopped talking, because designers are the most respected in Apple. Everyone knows that designers can represent Steve because they report directly to Steve. Only at Apple can designers report directly to the CEO.
Then my friend also went to Microsoft. He walked into the Microsoft conference room, everyone was talking, the meeting started, and no designers came in. All the technicians sat there and put forward their own ideas on product design. It was a disaster.
Microsoft employs the smartest people in the world. It is well known that Microsoft has given candidates quite challenging tests. But the problem is that intelligence and talent are not the key. At Apple, the designer is the highest-ranking person in the company, led by Steve himself. But in other companies, designers are not at the top, but buried under bureaucracy. Bureaucracy means that many people only have the right to say "no" and have no right to say "yes". Therefore, the products produced have been compromised. This goes against Jobs' philosophy: the most important decision is what you decide not to do, not what you decide to do. This is his minimalist thought again.
Whether it's design or user experience, industrial design or system design, or even how the motherboard is placed, these must be beautiful in Jobs' eyes, although Macintosh users can't open the chassis and look inside because he doesn't want users to destroy anything inside. The perfection he demands is that everything must be beautifully designed, even if it is impossible for ordinary customers to see it.
Jobs' obsession with design is well known. He used to run around the Apple parking lot and concentrate on observing all the Mercedes-Benz cars. He observed the font, color and format of printing crazily.
Apple will do its best to do every detail of the packaging-"open me first" design, packaging box, folding line, paper, printing design ... its products are like goods bought from fashion brand stores or the most upscale jewelry companies. At that time, we were looking for a design company to design a product. We have studied Italian designers, who will really study the design of cars and observe the accuracy and integrity, materials and colors of cars.
At that time, no one in Silicon Valley was like us. This seems to be the most distant thing for Silicon Valley in the 1980s. Of course, it wasn't my idea. Although my background has something to do with it, it was entirely driven by Jobs.
I got a lot of criticism after I took over Apple. People say, "How can they let someone who knows nothing about computers run a computer company?" Most people don't understand that Apple is not only a computer company, but also designs products, designs marketing and designs enterprise positioning.
Design is the uniqueness of Apple. The glass steps of the Apple Store are all made of special glass. This is a typical way of thinking of Jobs. Everyone around him knows that he is a unique person. He set a series of completely different standards from other CEOs. He is a minimalist, constantly reducing the burden to the simplest level-not simple, but streamlined. Steve is a system designer. He simplified the complicated things.
If we don't pay attention to these things, we can only achieve simple results. For example, Zune of Microsoft. After Microsoft released Zune, almost no one took a look and disappeared. I'm sure they are all smart people, but their principles are different. Microsoft won't make mistakes until the third time. Its principle is to push it to the market first and then gradually improve it.
Jobs would never do that. He wants to make sure everything is perfect before putting the product on the market.
Pay attention to systematic thinking
The company that Jobs admired was Sony. We visited Mr. Akio Morita, the founder of Sony. He and Jobs have the same high-end standards and advocate aesthetic products. Mr Akio Morita is obviously one of Steve's idols.
I remember Akio Morita gave Jobs and me a first-generation Sony Walkman laptop. We have never seen such a product, because there was no comparable product at that time. Jobs was deeply attracted by this walkman. The first thing he did was to take apart his machine, observe each part and study how it was installed, manufactured and polished.
Jobs was also fascinated by Sony's factory. In Sony's factory, workers wear uniforms of different colors-green, blue ... What color depends on their functions. These details were well thought out and impeccable, which also left a deep impression on Jobs.
So is the Mac factory. Although the workers inside don't have colored uniforms, every detail of the factory is as beautiful as the Sony factory we have seen. Steve really wants to be like Sony. He doesn't want to learn from IBM or Microsoft. He wants to be Sony.
Jobs studied C.K.Prahalad's book Digital Future. Japanese companies all start from the market share of parts, some dominate the sensor market, some control the memory market, and some dominate the hard disk market. Then they will use parts to improve their market competitiveness, and then slowly transfer to the end products. Whoever controls the price of key components will have an advantage, but this does not apply to all digital electronic products.
Today, we can see that with the rise of the consumer electronics industry, Sony has had great problems at least in the past 15 years. Their department has completely formed a "pipeline" organization. People in the software department don't communicate with employees in the hardware department, the hardware department doesn't communicate with the parts department, and the parts department doesn't communicate with the design department. There are often disputes between organizations and departments, all of which are tense and hidebound.
Sony could have made an iPod, but they didn't. Apple made it. The iPod is a perfect example of Jobs' methodology. Jobs has always adopted a terminal-to-terminal system. He is not a designer, but a great systems thinker. Other companies generally focus on their own work and then outsource other work. The supply chain of iPod is as mature as the design of the product itself. The challenge facing the supply chain is not only user design, but also unified and perfect standards. This is a complete innovation.
Jobs thought about design from a system perspective and insisted on managing and controlling the whole system. He believes that if the system is opened, there will be artificial changes, and these changes will greatly reduce the user experience, and Jobs will not launch products with discounted user experience.
Jobs's design methodology is very correct. Even 25 years ago, his primary design concept focused on several points: only focusing on Apple's system, never compromising, only comparing with the most exquisite jewelry, never comparing with other products. No one can think of all these standards. Others have just experienced the evolution of a product.
Jobs thought he had to control the whole system and make every decision. All this is for the user experience and runs through the whole end-to-end system, whether it is the computer desktop or iTunes, it is a part of the end-to-end system.
Ideas create reality.
Jobs asked me to join, not because I know computers, but because I have both design background and product marketing experience. Before I joined Apple, Jobs and I had known each other for several months. Steve has never been exposed to marketing, but if he thinks some information is important, he will try to learn as much as possible, which is typical of Steve's style.
He was fascinated by one thing: I described to him how to make Pepsi a symbol for consumers to shape their image by changing people's ideas, so that its sales performance greatly exceeded that of Coca-Cola.
Coca-Cola has always focused on Coca-Cola itself. Pepsi focuses on people who drink coke. We let people see that people who ride bicycles, sledge, fly kites or glide and do different things will eventually drink Pepsi. Pepsi is the first company to conduct lifestyle marketing.
We didn't start advertising TV until color TV and 19 inch TV appeared. We didn't look for a TV advertising company because they were all advertising small-screen black-and-white TV. We went to Hollywood to find the best film actor and made a 60-second film about lifestyle for us.
Of course, the purpose of this is to create an idea: Pepsi comes first. Because you can't be the first, unless your idea thinks it is the first. You must act like the first one. Jobs was fascinated by this phenomenon. We discussed how ideas lead to reality-if you want to create reality, you must create this idea. Steve likes the idea.
Many things we did at that time and our marketing focused on when to bring Mac to market. He created a high-level expectation concept, which made people want to know the function of this product. Mac didn't have much motivation at first, and all technologies were used to improve the user experience. In fact, some people feedback that it is like a toy and can do nothing. But with the development of technology, Mac can finally achieve many functions.
Steve's talent is that he can understand new discoveries and try to integrate them into his design methods. Everything revolves around design. When I was at Apple, Steve never changed his first principle, but constantly improved and perfected it. Jobs once asked me, "How did Pepsi come up with such a good advertisement?" He asked Pepsi whether it had chosen a good advertising company. I told him the truth, first of all, there must be an exciting product, so that I can boldly advertise to present it.
Good advertisements come from good advertisers. The most creative advertisers want to cooperate with the best customers. If you don't appreciate excellent work, don't want to take risks and try new things, and are not interested in creative things, then you are not the best customer.
Many big companies have people who are in charge of this. The CEO seldom knows about the company's advertisements before the advertisements are finished. Pepsi and Apple didn't, and I'm sure Steve won't do it now. He is always stubbornly involved in advertising, design and everything else.
Another example of his talent is the Apple retail store. Jobs found Mickey Drexler, then a retail expert and head of Gap, to join Apple's board of directors and learn from him about retail. As a result, Jobs not only learned to retail, but also designed the best retail store in the world. I have never seen a better store than Apple Retail Store. It is not only the highest revenue per square foot in the world, but also provides customers with an extraordinary consumption experience.
Apple retail stores are always crowded with people. In contrast, Sony Center and Nokia Store are always left out. Other stores only display goods, but in the Apple Store, you can touch and feel goods, and many people around you are shopping like you. It shows that people who own Apple products live an enviable lifestyle.
The experience of using products is not entirely about the user experience, but also about how advertisements present products and product designs. Jobs' requirements for product installation and appearance are also legendary. Only real designers will pay attention to these tiny details, such as dividing lines and baffles.
Even if others don't see anything wrong, Jobs will veto the plan he is not satisfied with. It is precisely because he has such high standards that people will sigh: "How did Apple do it? How did Apple produce such a magical product? "
Source: Green Company Magazine
It seems that 2L's accidental knowledge is too short-sighted.