Inside steves brain

Developing innovative products requires making tough calls to stop adding features and start manufacturing. Steve Jobs exemplified this discipline. His focus was the user experience, not cramming in bells and whistles. He pared back features until devices became simple and intuitive.

Left unchecked, engineers tend to add more capabilities until products become confusing. You need someone to clearly define the primary function and stick to it. Jobs acted like a dictator, laying down the law on included features. If something was too complex, he demanded simplification until it was right.

Steve Jobs was unrelenting in his pursuit of perfection. His singular focus was to create phenomenal products without compromise. Jobs was willing to iterate endlessly until he achieved excellence, even if it meant scrapping projects entirely. As Jobs said, "Design is how it works, not just how it looks." He grasped that truly excellent design requires deep understanding of a problem to devise an elegant solution.

This passion for perfection made Jobs notoriously demanding to work with. However, it also led Apple to earn countless design awards and cultivate intensely loyal customers. Even early on with the Apple II, Jobs recognized the importance of design. He hired a designer to create a professional-looking molded plastic case, distinguishing Apple from competitors using hobbyist kits.

Steve Jobs believed in surrounding himself with only the best talent. He sought out A-players across all fields and recruited them to work on his projects. Once he had assembled a team of top-notch collaborators, he gave them the freedom to do great work.

Jobs was unapologetically elitist in his approach. He maintained that a small team of highly talented people achieves far more than a vast group of average talent. Accordingly, he made it his mission to hire the smartest designers, engineers, and business strategists in the world. Jobs also forged partnerships with leading brands like Disney, Pepsi, and major record labels.

When Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, he built a team of trusted managers from NeXT and gave them responsibility for hardware, software, sales, operations, and finance. Unlike expectations, Jobs delegated day-to-day duties so he could focus on developing new products.

Steve Jobs is undoubtedly passionate about his work, aspiring to make a significant impact on the world. His intense sense of mission colors everything he does at Apple.

Jobs believes it's acceptable to be difficult if you're passionate about your goals. He has no qualms about being demanding until he gets what he wants, even if it means creating a "reality distortion field." Oddly, his collaborators seem to appreciate this, pushing themselves to do great work. While it may eventually lead to burnout, amazing things happen in the meantime.

Jobs famously recruited John Sculley from Pepsi by asking if he wanted to sell sugar water or change the world. Sculley couldn't resist the challenge. Jobs also inspires passion in his teams. The original Mac developers worked 90 hour weeks for months, getting sweatshirts reading "Ninety Hours a Week and Loving It." The goal was to do something revolutionary, not just beat competitors or make money.

An ongoing source of inspiration and new product ideas for Apple is Steve Jobs' careful attention to the customer experience. He has good instincts for what customers will like, though not infallible. His alertness sparks many great ideas. Apple earned a reputation as one of the world's most creative and innovative companies. Surprisingly, Apple has no formal system for generating new ideas and harnessing innovation.

"We don't think, 'Let's be innovative! Take a class! Here are the five rules of innovation, let's put them all over the company!' Trying to systemize innovation is painful to watch. The system is that there is no system. We have great processes, but that's not what it's about. Innovation comes from people meeting up or calling each other with a new idea, because they realized something that shoots holes in our thinking. It's ad hoc meetings of six people called by someone who has a cool new idea and wants others' thoughts." - Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs is undoubtedly a perfectionist who demands complete control over every aspect of the products he creates, from hardware and software to services and access.

This controlling approach was long seen as a critical weakness for Apple, but now that customers are looking for well-designed and easy-to-use devices like the iPod, Jobs' insistence on end-to-end control could prove to be the right strategy as digital entertainment continues to grow.

Jobs oversees every part of Apple, from employee meals to product design and marketing. Some believe his controlling tendencies stem from being adopted, while others think he wants to avoid being ousted again like he was in the past.

But lately, Jobs' obsession with control has benefited Apple, resulting in reliable, simple-to-use gadgets. Tight integration of hardware and software leads to a more predictable, manageable system. Closed systems restrict choice but are more dependable because there are fewer cooks in the kitchen.