Steve Jobs will be remembered for creating some beautiful products, but no doubt he will also be revered as one of the greatest innovators of the past three decades.
The secret to Jobs’ success lies not only in his keen eye for design and consumer electronics, but for being able to create a vision, innovate new products within that vision, and then do it again, and again.
If nothing else, Apple under Jobs’ leadership was focused on innovation, by staying ahead of the pack and being focused on creating new ideas that no other company was working on. It’s a legacy more entrepreneurs need to keep in mind.
Last month SmartCompany hosted a webinar with Gallo Communications founder Carmine Gallo, author of the book The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs.
Gallo’s webinar – which can be viewed here – took the several hundred attendees through some of the biggest innovations they should learn from Steve Jobs’ success.
From getting more creative, to being in control of your company’s vision, here’s what SME should learn from Jobs’ impressive track record of innovation:
Last year when speaking with Bill Gates at an All Things Digital conference, Jobs responded to a question about how entrepreneurs can hope to have the same success he has with Apple. His response was simple – you need to have a passion for what you do, “otherwise any rational person would give up”.
“Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition,” he said in his famous commencement speech in 2005. “They somehow already know what you truly want to become.”
Jobs was successful because he cared about his products. He was so hands-on that he finalised key details, including the exact weight of products, to the type of wood that was to be used in Apple’s retail stores.
Only someone who cared about these products would go to such a high level of detail. But it is exactly this tendency to place such a high priority on seemingly unimportant bits and pieces that makes Jobs’ dedication to innovation a lesson all entrepreneurs must take to heart.
There is a reason why the iPhone continues to sell millions of products while other smartphones fail to reach that same level of success – Apple’s focus on creating something new.
Part of Jobs’ skill was being able to see where a market would be two or three years’ ahead of time, and then creating products that suit the vision of the future. Jobs is famous for saying Apple would rather gamble on its own vision rather than make “me-too” products, and SMEs need to follow the same example.
Creating something new is always better than being a copycat. If you have a good, different idea, then have the courage to follow it through. Your success will be greater than if you had created a slightly better version of something that already exists.
Plenty of entrepreneurs are intelligent thinkers, but not many are creative. You need to have the ability to perceive information and then use it to create something totally different.
Jobs once said that part of the reason the Mac was successful was that the “people working on it were musicians, and poets, and artists, and zoologists, and historians, who also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world”.
Successful innovators need to be creative and foster creativity within their own businesses. Don’t restrict your staff, or yourself, from bringing up new ideas – some may even work.
One of the biggest fundamental mistakes marketers make is that they sell the actual product, without the reasons someone should buy it.
Consider the tablet market. Plenty of Apple’s competitors have tried to sell alternatives to the iPad, including the Motorola Xoom, and the Galaxy Tab. They haven’t even come close to making a dent in Apple’s success, and here’s why: they sell a product, rather than the benefits.
Motorola, Samsung and Research In Motion praise their devices’ various bells and whistles, such as USB connectivity, a high definition screen, the ability to watch any video file you want, and so on. But none of these companies actually show you what you can do with it.
Consider Apple’s own marketing. Its advertisements show families connecting via FaceTime, children learning to write, and board members reading reports on the fly, backed by the comforting, simple sounds of an acoustic guitar or piano. The message is simple – the iPad will help you be creative, work and connect with your family, and it’s easier than what you’re doing now.
Successful innovators identify problems, tell their customers how they can fix it, and then introduce a product. Sell the idea of your product and what it can do, not just the product itself.
Jobs once said that having focus is the ability to say “no”. He made that comment in 1997, less than a year after he returned to the company to help straighten things out. He lamented that Apple was heading in too many directions without much focus.
Innovators need to say no. They need to learn when a product isn’t good enough, and when you can do better. Just as an editor eliminates the worst part of a news story, an innovator’s job is to cut the worst parts of a product, and then work on the promising parts.
Here’s a secret – Apple’s products aren’t the most technically capable. Most smartphones on the market can do more than the iPhone, and a Windows machine will let you do much, much more than a Mac running OS X. But Apple still outsells them all.
“It just works.”
Most people want simplicity and power. They want to be able to do all sorts of things with their computers, but don’t want the hassle of figuring out how to do it. Apple products are powerful, yet simple. Their user interfaces are so easy to use that children can operate them.
Innovators must not only create good products, but recognise the experience of using them is just as important. Your product might be powerful, but if it doesn’t “just work”, then you’ve wasted your time.
One of Apple’s biggest successes this past decade has been its ability to control a cohesive message and brand. Jobs has steered the company away from a complicated, unattractive mess, to a firm that is inherently tied with attractive, simplistic design. Less is more.
And this branding reaches throughout the entire company. Consider the slides used at all of Apple’s presentations – they’re clean. Free of complicated graphs, with rarely more than one graphic appearing on the screen at a time, they deliver the same message as Apple’s products.
Controlling your company’s message is critical to good innovation. Building a brand helps cement your company in the minds of your customers, and that message needs to permeate throughout the entire business and its values.
Part of being able to innovate is also being able to create a cohesive message. Too many businesses fail because they don’t have a singular vision. Build one, and then ensure it stays intact.
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Patrick Stafford is a freelance journalist and a former deputy editor of SmartCompany.
