Lessons on Innovation, Collaboration & Leadership from Steve Jobs

Fortune put out excerpts from an interview with Steve Jobs earlier this month. Jobs makes some very candid, and direct points. The whole interview is quite insightful and helps to disprove some of the common misconceptions around what collaboration is all about.


Misconception 1: Collaboration means "wisdom of crowds" is better than "experts".

I am not sure why there seems to be an argument in many forums about whether "wisdom of crowds" is better than "experts". Optimal collaboration taps into the masses, but is refined through the experts. It's not one or the other, it's the intelligent collaboration of both.

So you can't go out and ask people, you know, what the next big [thing.] There's a great quote by Henry Ford, right? He said, 'If I'd have asked my customers what they wanted, they would have told me "A faster horse." '

In reference to the debates over embedding a sophisticates OS X in a cell phone Jobs states, "I had to adjudicate it and just say, 'We're going to do it. Let's try.' The smartest software guys were saying they can do it, so let's give them a shot. And they did."

Misconception 2: Innovation is the result of an individual genius.

There have been several noted authors that have proven this to be usually wrong. Read Andrew Hargadon's work on, "How Breakthroughs Really Happen". For example, the light bulb (the symbol for innovation) wasn't actually created by Edison.

In discussing people, Jobs talks to the need for passion in addition to smarts. "They have to be really smart. But the real issue for me is, Are they going to fall in love with Apple? Because if they fall in love with Apple, everything else will take care of itself."

To be the best requires individuals to understand broadly and not just their area. "So the way to do that is to have them know everything, not just in their part of the business, but in every part of the business. "


Misconception 3: Who cares if it's not perfect. Get your product out and then iterate.


There is much to be said about focus and getting it right the first time. I've often heard folks argue that, "Shoot first then aim later. Who cares if the bullets are cheap"... I guess the problem with that approach is that you can kill the wrong thing, and you can't "un-kill" if you made a mistake.

"Apple is a $30 billion company, yet we've got less than 30 major products. I don't know if that's ever been done before.... People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are."

"At Pixar when we were making Toy Story, there came a time when we were forced to admit that the story wasn't great. It just wasn't great. We stopped production for five months.... And if they hadn't had the courage to stop, there would have never been a Toy Story the way it is, and there probably would have never been a Pixar.we never expected to have another one. But you know what? There's been one on every film. It's been that way with [almost] every major project at Apple, too.... Take the iPhone. We had a different enclosure design for this iPhone until way too close to the introduction to ever change it. And I came in one Monday morning, I said, 'I just don't love this. I can't convince myself to fall in love with this. And this is the most important product we've ever done.' "And we pushed the reset button. "

The article has many more insights and worth the read.

Enterprise 2.0 Organizational Structure: Importing more than just technology from Web 2.0

There's much more to web 2.0 than just the technology. For those looking to replicate the success of web 2.0 into their enterprise 2.0 initiative they should consider organizational structure for the the self-organizing community.


Long before Web 2.0, I was inspired by Jim Collin's work in Good to Great. Of the many observations made, he talked about the role of leadership. That the role of leadership is NOT to motivate people. That if you had the right people first, and provided the right opportunity, people are self-motivated. The role of leadership is to not let them get de-motivated!


I've personally experienced this and am sure many of you have as well. Where you have been a part of something you were quite passionate about. The thrill wasn't about the money, but making your mark and driving 'the right thing'.

Unfortunately, the traditional hierarchical organizational model is a bit of a hit-or-miss. Sure we may get some activities cascaded through the chain-of-command and we can get passionate about them but there are so many opportunities that don't cascade to the individual through this model. What if somewhere else in the organization there is a team doing something I know I could help them with and that I was extremely passionate about? I don't get the opportunity and the organization misses the opportunity.


Web 2.0 has some advice for us. It has proven the potential of a more heterarchical model. One where the individual self-selects the activities that best fit his/her skills & passions. Being Saint Patrick's day and all, here is a visual (The Clover) that represents the self-organized hierarchy and which happens to look a bit like a 4-leaf clover. Others have also referred to this as the Hollywood model.

This org chart should look a lot different to the standard one we see. Does it completely replace the traditional org structure? In my opinion... No... It actually co-exists. For this to work, a couple of things are missing from the visual.

First, there needs to be co-ordination of the activities within the self-organized communities. A co-ordinator allows people to know when opportunities exists, manages the set of activities holistically. Note this does not mean the co-ordinator is the "leader" of the activities.

Secondly, there will be tasks that nobody may volunteer for. For those tasks, leadership will still have to request individuals to perform the tasks and try to best match skills with the task.

Thirdly, people are still people. They need mentoring, coaching, feedback, compensation. In a fluid model like "The Clover", this can be quite difficult. My proposal here is to retain stability of a coach/boss. They may or may-not actually report into these coaches.

Way back in school I recall an economics class on "perfect discrimination". The ability to perfectly match price to the individual to maximize profit. In a way, this self-organization friendly org structure allows us to much better match that value an individual brings to the table with the work that needs to be done.