Here’s a great long-form article about the role of Xerox PARC in the creation of the Macintosh by Malcolm Gladwell.
http://www.gladwell.com/2011/2011_05_16_a_creationmyth.html
What strikes me most is how it’s extremely rare for a company to be everything – a hotbed of research, a strong product commercializer, etc. And like the Everything’s a Remix videos say, well, everything’s a remix and we step forward, one idea to the next. It’s not copying (those that occurs in different places), it’s invention from the inspiration of what exists now.
Here’s an article about my favourite designer, Jonathan Ive, Snr VP of Industrial Design at Apple.
What I like most, besides the perfectionist streaks, is the glimpses into their design team process and culture:
The man who, after Jobs, is most responsible for Apple’s amazing ability to dazzle and delight with its famous products, chose instead to talk about process—what he called “the craft of design.” He spoke passionately about his small team and how they work together. He talked about focusing on only what is important and limiting the number of projects. He spoke about having a deep understanding of how a product is made: its materials, its tooling, its purpose. Mostly, he focused on the need to care deeply about the work.
“One of the hallmarks of the team I think is this sense of looking to be wrong,” said Ive at Radical Craft. “It’s the inquisitiveness, the sense of exploration. It’s about being excited to be wrong because then you’ve discovered something new.”
In an interview with Steve Job’s about the iPod’s approaching 5 year birthday:
What was the design lesson of the iPod?
Look at the design of a lot of consumer products—they’re really complicated surfaces. We tried make something much more holistic and simple. When you first start off trying to solve a problem, the first solutions you come up with are very complex, and most people stop there. But if you keep going, and live with the problem and peel more layers of the onion off, you can oftentimes arrive at some very elegant and simple solutions. Most people just don’t put in the time or energy to get there. We believe that customers are smart, and want objects which are well thought through.
A great quality for a designer is that way of looking at something that’s become totally accepted and assumed and being able to ask “but how could we make it better?”
If you think about an electrical plug, you could think “they work – what’s still to do?”.
Well, for a start: which plug is which, and how do I know if it is on?
We’ve seen it again and again. Every company wants to be an innovator. They’ll stick an Apple logo up as an exemplar organisation. Everyone wants to have the iPod of their product category.
But of course you have to do the things that Apple does to get their results. And that is often very hard, and involves change. Hell, if it was easy, everyone would be doing it. But just like eating well and exercising regularly to lose weight, it isn’t rocket surgery either. And one of the key things Apple does is give prime attention to design.
Here’s an article about design at Apple.
It’s only a few pages and worth a read, but here are my fave gems quotes:
On spending design time up-front:
…today Apple spends 15 to 20 percent of its industrial-design time on concept—far more than most other computer companies—and the rest on implementation.
On design-by-commitee and consensus design:
[Apple’s former process] was a consultative process – many different points of view and impressions were solicited. But this can lead to a lack of cohesion in the product, when you find yourself asking another manager, ‘What are you adding in?’ … you’d get a cascade of people responsible for various factors injecting their concerns. … The businessman wants to create something for everyone, which leads to products that are middle of the road. It becomes about consensus, and that’s why you rarely see the spark of genius.
On having a singular design vision:
Critical to Apple’s success in design is the way [Steve] Jobs brought focus and discipline to the product teams. [Jobs] had a single, cohesive image of the final product and would not allow any deviation, no matter how promising a new proposed feature appeared to be, no matter how much the team complained. Other companies are more democratic, listening to everyone’s opinions, and the result is bloat and a lack of cohesion.
On keeping features out:
The hardest part of design, especially consumer electronics, is keeping features out. Simplicity is in itself a product differentiator, and pursuing it can lead to innovation. The most fundamental thing about Apple that’s interesting is that they’re just as smart about what they don’t do. Great products can be made more beautiful by omitting things.
On clarity of vision and the difference between Apple and Sony:
[Apple’s design team’s] a small team that takes a very, very hands-on approach. Compared with Sony: the process of approval, and collaboration generally—for everything from shape to engineering—involves tons of people, taking up to 50 percent of the time, watering it down. What makes Apple Apple and not Sony is clarity of voice and vision.
Here’s a nice list of qualities and approaches from early ex-Amazon staff – things to ponder and wonder how we can do more of.
The full list is on 37signals.
But some of my favourites are:
- Work from the customer backward. Focus on value you want to deliver for the customer.
- Start with a press release of what features the user will see and work backwards to check that you are building something valuable. [My equivalent: imagine the Steve Job’s keynote]
- Open up your system with APIs and you’ll create an ecosystem around your application.
- Look for three things in interviews: enthusiasm, creativity, competence. The single biggest predictor of success at Amazon.com was enthusiasm.
- Innovation can only come from the bottom. Those closest to the problem are in the best position to solve it. any organization that depends on innovation must embrace chaos. Loyalty and obedience are not your tools.
- People’s side projects, the one’s they follow because they are interested, are often ones where you get the most value and innovation. Never underestimate the power of wandering where you are most interested.
It’s always amusing (or frustrating - depending on the day) that companies aspire to have the success of an Apple or a Google, but balk at embracing that things these companies state clearly that they do.
For example, on Google’s Corporate Information page, they are super upfront about their 10 guiding principles. And #1 goes like this:
Focus on the user and all else will follow.
From its inception, Google has focused on providing the best user experience possible. While many companies claim to put their customers first, few are able to resist the temptation to make small sacrifices to increase shareholder value. Google has steadfastly refused to make any change that does not offer a benefit to the users who come to the site:
The interface is clear and simple. Pages load instantly. Placement in search results is never sold to anyone. Advertising on the site must offer relevant content and not be a distraction.
By always placing the interests of the user first, Google has built the most loyal audience on the web. And that growth has come not through TV ad campaigns, but through word of mouth from one satisfied user to another.
The simplicity of that criterion is wonderful. Don’t do anything that won’t provide benefit to users. Let that be your judge. Trust that you’ll be able to make money from solutions that people find valuable.
Clay Shirky’s “Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable” about the changing times of the newspaper business is one of the best things I’ve read on innovation culture. (Thanks Daring Fireball for pointing it out.)
Revolutions create a curious inversion of perception. In ordinary times, people who do no more than describe the world around them are seen as pragmatists, while those who imagine fabulous alternative futures are viewed as radicals. The last couple of decades haven’t been ordinary, however. Inside the papers, the pragmatists were the ones simply looking out the window and noticing that the real world was increasingly resembling the unthinkable scenario. These people were treated as if they were barking mad. Meanwhile the people spinning visions of popular walled gardens and enthusiastic micropayment adoption, visions unsupported by reality, were regarded not as charlatans but saviors.
When reality is labeled unthinkable, it creates a kind of sickness in an industry. Leadership becomes faith-based, while employees who have the temerity to suggest that what seems to be happening is in fact happening are herded into Innovation Departments, where they can be ignored en masse. This shunting aside of the realists in favor of the fabulists has different effects on different industries at different times. One of the effects on the newspapers is that many of their most passionate defenders are unable, even now, to plan for a world in which the industry they knew is visibly going away.
One of the key aspects of an innovation culture that it highlights is the important role experimentation plays. Innovative companies try stuff. They aren’t sure everything is going to work. Some things will fail. But as the article points out (as it looks back to the invention of print as another moment of historical change and innovation):
During the wrenching transition to print, experiments were only revealed in retrospect to be turning points. … That is what real revolutions are like. The old stuff gets broken faster than the new stuff is put in its place. The importance of any given experiment isn’t apparent at the moment it appears; big changes stall, small changes spread. Even the revolutionaries can’t predict what will happen.
And so it is today. When someone demands to know how we are going to replace newspapers, they are really demanding to be told that we are not living through a revolution. They are demanding to be told that old systems won’t break before new systems are in place. They are demanding to be told that ancient social bargains aren’t in peril, that core institutions will be spared, that new methods of spreading information will improve previous practice rather than upending it. They are demanding to be lied to. There are fewer and fewer people who can convincingly tell such a lie.
Those quotes are juicy. The whole article is worthwhile.
Two related asides:
At MX09, Margaret Gould Stewart talked about Google’s culture and that you rarely hear people at Google use the “I” word. Innovation is just business as usual. And as this article mentioned, if your company has an “Innovation Department”, you probably have a serious problem.
Experimentation is linked to curiosity. And as the New York Times points out, it’s curiosity that’s behind Amazon’s Jeff Bezos spending a week working on the floor of their distribution warehouse.
