Guy Kawasaki writes for CNET, “Many people have explained what one can learn from Steve Jobs. But few, if any, of these people have been inside the tent and experienced first hand what it was like to work with him.”
Kawasaki writes, “I don’t want any lessons to be lost or forgotten, so here is my list of the top 12 lessons I learned from Steve Jobs.”
The top 12 lessons I learned from Steve Jobs:
1. Experts are clueless
2. Customers cannot tell you what they need
3. Jump to the next curve
4. The biggest challenges beget best work
5. Design counts
6. You can’t go wrong with big graphics and big fonts
7. Changing your mind is a sign of intelligence
8. “Value” is different from “price”
9. A players hire A+ players
10. Real CEOs demo
11. Real CEOs ship
12. Marketing boils down to providing unique value
Bonus: Some things need to be believed to be seen.
Kawasaki writes, “When you are jumping curves, defying/ignoring the experts, facing off against big challenges, obsessing about design, and focusing on unique value, you will need to convince people to believe in what you are doing in order to see your efforts come to fruition. People needed to believe in Macintosh to see it become real. Ditto for the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad. Not everyone will believe — that’s OK. But the starting point of changing the world is changing a few minds. This is the greatest lesson of all that I learned from Steve. May he rest in peace knowing how much he changed the world.”
Read more in the full article, with explanations of each of the 12 points above, here.
#1 is often true (especially when it comes to Apple), but certainly not a generalization. Doctors are “experts” and I certainly hope most of them are NOT “clueless.”
The reason industry experts (the “analysts”) are often so clueless about Apple is because they are experts in the current status quo, the norm. Apple strives to do the unexpected.
Doctors practice, therefore they are not experts.
Practice,practice,practice. It’s the only way to become an expert. Unless it’s the Yankees or Phil’s. Geez, is that fun to say! Wow!
I would argue your point, western doctors are very often clueless. my points:
1. They drink their own kool-aid; think they know best, when often they do not.
2. They treat symptoms, rather than focus on causality and cure.
3. The overprescribe, narcotics and antibiotics, to the detriment of the collective and the individual.
4. The quickly dismiss offhand that which they do not know: Acupuncture, Eastern medicine, natural holistic therapies.
5. They often corrupted by big pharma, greed and love of money. The majority of hospitals are run by a handful of for profit corporations these days.
It used to be quite the noble profession, now it feels like an assembly line to visit the doctor. There are of course exceptions to this, by overwhelmingly I find it to be as I’ve described.
Truth, you speaketh it.
The only honest doctor I know is Dr. Mercola.
After practicing 40 yrs in medicine, I agree with you wholeheartedly except I have serious reservation of #4. If Jobs did not wait for nearly an year, his fate could have been different.
My 2 cents as a foreign medical graduate and being in academic scene in two medical schools
Wait for what?
It was said Steve put off seeking conventional medical cancer treatment ASAP, and instead opted for holistic BS. Big mistake. You don’t screw around with cancer.
I am not a Doctor, I’m not connected to the medical industry in any way.
I applaud the work of Doctors and the medical profession and I raise a glass (of water) to them.
“Cheers” … to Doctors and the medical profession.
Doctors are a commodity like all other products and services.
Doctors are people; people are flawed by default.
It is up to the individual to source a Doctor of good caliber with excellent connections.
@Truth – NOT
What a skewed view you got of reality and doctors in general and connecting Guy Kawasaki’s #1 “Experts are clueless” to experts in other fields like doctors is plain stupidity. You for example sound more like an expert in bitterness and stupidity rather than anything else, almost paranoid. Are you yourself clueless? Thought so.
Do you know how many experts work at Apple, f ex in engineering, marketing etc etc? Have they been clueless coming out with all these products from Apple? Certainly not.
And remember, whatever opinions Guy Kawasaki has on what he has learned from Steve Jobs is totally based on his capability of grasping of what Steve Jobs really stands for, not being him and not necessarily understanding him fully. Just his view about him, but not the true Steve Jobs.
And, “#7. Changing your mind is a sign of intelligence”. Can you?
@Truth
As one of the clueless that you so elegantly rant about, I would like to just say that I took an oath to treat you and offer my expertise to you despite your rant. My colleagues and I would be the first to help you while you beg us to save your life.
Although we the clueless applaud your efforts at free speech, collectively we abhor your ridiculous generalization of our profession. Perhaps you could show a little more respect for those of us who have to do the following:
1. Study for an average of 12 years post high school with minimum pay for the last 4 years of training and no pay for the 8 preceding.
2. Take a multitude of examinations.
3. Take a full day multi-part examination every 7-10 years in order to maintain certification and licenses
4. Maintain 50-100 hours of Education – including those of the holistic- per year.
5. Put up with insurance company denials.
6. Do 1-2 hours of paperwork, phone calls and other miscellaneous things after seeing patients for a full day.
We are not all perfect and the bad apples get the loudest press, but there are many of us doing the right thing and saving lives.
One More thing…
Steve Jobs survived 8 years following his diagnosis due to an exemplary diet and lifestyle and because of modern medicine.
Just a thought.
Your one of those people that believe in faith healing aren’t you?
Guy defined exactly who he was referring to as “Experts” in his article:
Experts—journalists, analysts, consultants, bankers, and gurus can’t “do” so they “advise.”
Why the twist, in referring to doctors as experts who, hopefully do have a clue, as do many practicing engineers, designers, programmers, etc…. You miss the point when you take the comment out of context.
I think, Mr. Kawasaki might be mistaken about Jobs changing his mind about allowing native Apps on the iPhone. During the famous unveiling of the iPhone in 2007, Steve had thought to mention (twice I think) that the OS is desktop grade capable of running powerful applications.
It is well know that the development of the iPhone (and iPad) took years (since 2004 maybe), and it’s naive to think that Steve and his astute team didn’t think of running apps. It’s just that, maybe, the APIs weren’t ready to be available with a dev kit (not just for technical reasons), and they were also working on an App store as delivery system. You can’t deliver all these with the initial launch of the system, that probably would have delayed it further. At the time of the first iPhone, even mere weeks before the unveiling, Steve was still working on certain hardware aspects, including changing from plastic to glass touch screens.
Steve, I believe, wanted developers to get excited about the phone, just initially on the web platform, which was also powerful and practical on many fronts, but had a full intention to allow native apps later.
I should mention/admit that many of his columns at Macworld and MacUser magazines had rubbed me the wrong way during the dark days of the 90s. However, I recognise that he has worked for Apple and a genuine fan/evangelist; there’s a good chance he knows far more on the matter than my idle speculation.
I agree. Lots of times, Apple lets the market think they didn’t plan everything, because that would be creepy! However, I agree Apple was just too busy and not ready to allow apps, but always intended to. I hope Isaacson’s book gives us the inside skinny.
I suspect Mr. Isaacson’s book will focus more on Steve’s private life than the minute details of the strategic decisions, sadly. To incorporate those brilliantly insightful (but maybe boring to general readers), even a couple of thousand pages book would not have sufficed.
For those juicy bits, we’ll have to wait for the actual flies on the walls–current and ex-Apple employees to write the next definitive version of this Universe-denter.
They’re making a movie on Mr. Jobs, but in reality, his oeuvre demands an HBO TV series; preferably done by Pixar.
Thanks Guy for sharing Jobs important and wise business lessons. When I read the last line here I couldn’t help tearing up being reminded once again he’s no longer with us. I am in such denial about it! If Jobs could be willed back into existence by all his many fans and admirers it would have happened already. Death may be a great invention but it also sucks for those left behind. May his spirit be roaming the Cosmos seeing things we can only dream of going “YaaaaaHOOOOOOooooooo!”. And may God be sniling down on him and tell him as a parent proudly would of an exceptional child “Well done Steven, well done.”
I like
7. Changing your mind is a sign of intelligence
aka flip-flopping.
Anybody who hasn’t flip-flopped hasn’t learned anything or has a closed mind. Even scientists flip-flop.
I like SJ but I do not agree with #2 about custemers!
I think #2 is the truest one on the list. Customers can tell Apple what they WANT (and Apple does listen), but Apple tells customer what they NEED.
Jobs always quoted Henry Ford.
Ford, “If I had asked customers what they wanted, they would have answered a faster horse.”
Ok, seriously, how do you get “customers” wrong?! The “o” and “e” are nowhere near each other on the keyboard.
#10. This is so true. I don’t recall any other CEO that can show a hands-on demo of the product their company produces.
Agreed.
I know of a few CEOs who have no clue about the products the company makes, let alone how to use one themselves!
Yeah, I heard that schmuck John Sculley couldn’t even pop the cap off a bottle of Pepsi.
“…Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers….”
Dyson.
This is what Guy learned not what Steve Jobs necessarily belueved. No one could understand his philosophy unless you were him.
“Real CEOs demo” and There you go! All you other MFCEO listen up. We got your number…
I’ll add one…
Don’t just participate in an endeavor, redefine it.
“1. Experts are clueless”
This would obviously include self-appointed expert tech reporters. Can everyone remember the reactions to the iPOD introduction 10 years ago. All the tech reporters were disappointed in “just another mp3 player.” “Why did Apple even call a major announcement for only that.” Even more with the iPad announcement – “just a bigger iPod Touch.” And now the new iPhone 4S. God save us from all these so-called experts.
PS. I an a physician, and most doctors realize they are not experts, but they do try their best to work within a broad consensus of what is believed to be currently true. As time marches on and more or newer information is obtained, old beliefs may be found to be false and newer approaches to a patient’s problems will be needed. Medicine is a dynamic , not static, process.
Also, Apple will kill its own successful products (iPod click wheel for example) rather than have the competition do it.
The one thing I’d say about doctors, is that they are given virtually impossible challenges every day.
My admiration for doctors is up there with the best of them.
Having spent many years consulting, including with some who have seen 50+ doctors with no progress, I can understand why many of them think that their doctors don’t have a clue, particularly once they are able to succeed where their doctors failed.
So nice of Guy to climb out into the limelight now.
He was a true expert during his Apple carreer (which just happened to coincide with the time when Steve was not there). Unfortunately for Guy, he just made public, that expert = clueless.
If ever there was someone who got everything wrong, it was Guy. A perfect match and team mate for his boss John Sculley.
And the headline should actually have read “Top 12 lessons I heard from SJ”