Want to Innovate Like Steve Jobs? Always Do This
You don't have to be a genius. You just have to open your eyes.
What does it take to be truly innovative? Maybe not what
you think. A lot of people believe you have to come up with something that
the world has never seen before. And some innovation does indeed come from
creating entirely new concepts. Electric lighting, for example.
But a lot more innovation, especially in today's world, results
from combining or connecting things in new ways. Take Google. It's a hugely
innovative company, but the innovation that set it up for everything that
followed was connecting two previously separate things--the number of other
pages that link to a page and its search ranking. That insight yielded vastly
improved search results.
Or take Apple, which appears at or near the top of every list of
innovative companies ever compiled. It didn't get there and stay there by
creating brand-new technologies, but by combining technology, function, and
design in ways no one else had ever thought of. Apple didn't invent the mobile
phone, it didn't invent the touchscreen, and it didn't invent the concept of an
operating system on which third-party apps could run. But it put those three
things together to create the first iPhone and completely changed the mobile
phone industry forever. Nearly every smartphone since has used that same
basic design.
That marrying of previously separate elements is behind many of
the innovations that have led to Apple's ongoing success. Before Jobs came
along, technology was created by engineers who put their whole souls into
giving their new devices and software as much gee-whiz appeal as they could,
but gave little thought to people's actual experience using their products.
Jobs's insight to combine powerful technology with ease of use and
compelling design is what has set Apple apart throughout its
history.
Your turn
The fact that innovation really consists of combining things in
new ways is good news if you're trying to bring more innovation into your work
or your company. It means you don't have to have an engineering degree (Jobs
didn't) or a lot of design skills to create something truly innovative. The way
Airbnb's founders--art students!--did when it occurred to them that they
could connect people who had spare rooms and wanted extra money with other
people who needed a place to stay.
What it takes is a hunger to look outside your job
and company and learn about other ways of doing things in other
places. It takes keeping your eyes and ears open, and staying on the
lookout for new connections and directions. It means being open to pursuing
whatever captures your imagination, even if its immediate use isn't obvious.
Jobs himself did that. After dropping out of Reed College,
because he didn't see how taking required courses there was helping him,
he decided to remain and sit in on some nonrequired courses that he found
interesting. One of these was a calligraphy course. He learned about
typography, and varying the space between letters, and what makes beautiful
lettering beautiful.
"None of this had even a hope of any practical application
in my life," he said later. "But 10 years later, when we were
designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed
it all into the Mac." Without Jobs's knowledge of typography, and
his ability to connect seemingly unconnected things, the Mac would never
have had choices of typefaces or proportionately spaced fonts. Since it was the
first personal computer to offer these things, maybe none of the PCs would
have. It would have been impossible to foresee connecting those dots when he
was in college, "but it was very, very clear looking backward 10 years
later," he said.
Which is why, he said, you must follow your intuition and
"trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future." That's the
best advice on how to innovate that I've ever heard.
BY MINDA
ZETLIN
http://www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/one-simple-strategy-that-helps-you-innovate-like-steve-jobs.html?cid=em01020week03a
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