Guy Kawasaki is one of the first developers and software engineers who worked for Steve Jobs and for many significant projects like Apple II and Macintosh computers. In that era, at the end of the 80's and early 90's, Apple struggled with IBM's domination in order to create an ideal personal computer that would be practical, have the perfect design, the user will get security and top performance, and the company will rise as the main flagship of innovation and thus gain a huge turnover.
Kawasaki gives an overview of 11 things directly taught by visionary Steve Jobs, who had an amazing feeling of marketing, applying the design in technology, and directing people around him to perform impressive feats in new products. That's why Kawasaki conveys 11 key things he learned from Steve Jobs.
- Only excellence matters
Jobs elevated women to positions of power long before it was cool or socially responsible to do so. He didn't care about gender, sexual orientation, race, creed or color. He divided the world into two groups: "Insanely great people" and "crappy people." It was that simple.
- Customers can't tell you what they need
In the early 1980s, Apple was selling Apple IIs. If you asked customers what they wanted, they would say a bigger, faster and cheaper Apple II. No one would have asked for a Mac.
- Innovation happens on the next curve
Macintosh was the next curve in personal computing. It wasn't merely an improvement to the Apple II or MS‑DOS curve. Innovation isn't making a slightly better status quo. It's about jumping to the next curve.
- Design counts
It may not count for everyone, but design counts for many people. Jobs was obsessed with great design. He drove us nuts with his attention to detail, but that is what made Apple successful.
- Less is more
One of the key tenets of Jobs' obsession with design was the belief that less is more. He was the minimalist's minimalist. You can even see this in his slides: They had dark blue or black backgrounds with 90 to 190 point text and no more than a handful of words.
- Big challenges beget big accomplishments
The goal of the Macintosh Division was preventing totalitarianism and worldwide domination by IBM. Merely shipping yet another computer was never the goal.
- Changing your mind is a sign of intelligence
When Jobs announced the iPhone, it was a closed programming system to ensure that it was safe and reliable. A year later, he opened it up to third-party apps, and iPhone sales skyrocketed. This was a 180 degree reversal and a sign of intelligence and courage.
- Engineers are artists
Jobs treated engineers like artists. They weren't cogs in a machine whose output was measured in lines of code. Macintosh was an artistic expression by engineers whose palette was software and hardware design.
- Price and value are not the same thing
No one ever bought a Macintosh based on price. Its true value became evident only when you factored in the lower requirements for support and training. Jobs didn't fight on price, but he won on value.
- But value isn't enough
Many products are valuable, but if your product isn't also unique or differentiated in some way, you have to compete on price. You can succeed this way — as Dell did, for example. But if you truly want to "dent the universe," your product needs to be both unique and valuable.
- Some things need to be believed to be seen
Innovators ignore naysayers to get the job done. The "experts" told Jobs he was wrong many times — for example, Macintosh, iPod, iPhone and Apple retail stores. It's not that Jobs was always right, but sometimes, you need to believe in something in order to see it.