I don’t know Steve Jobs and reading through the many Twitter comments and blog posts it is not easy to add to the accolades he so richly deserves. But in considering his contribution to society and the tech industry, I think three points are worth comment regarding his life. Having spent 25 years in the Internet tech space – starting in the late 70’s, early 80’s with Commodore PET, TRS-80 and Timex computers (yes, Timex made computers) – Mr. Jobs’s contributions to the development of the Internet and computing technology are undeniable. But how he did what he did and why he did it – at least as best I can read it – is very important too.
First, change is an inevitable and important part of the success of the tech sector, all of us who are involved in it like to say. But Pip Coburn, a tech trends analyst whom I think is very smart, has a saying (and I’m paraphrasing) – all of us like to say we like change but what we really mean is we like to HAVE changed. What he means is that even changing software programs or updating to a new version can be a wrenching process because you have to learn the ins and outs of the new version or the new software and it takes time, can be frustrating and you are always wondering what features of functions you may have missed in adopting the new technology.
Jobs seems to have genuinely reveled in change unlike most of the rest of us. He seems to have liked the journey towards something new and not just getting to the destination. Most of us want to be at the destination and would rather not have to make the journey. Change is a hard process and humans don’t really like to participate in it. You have to really love what you are doing in order to risk a lot of go through what can be a very long and difficult process to get to where you want to go. It took decades – literally – for the zipper to become main stream. It had many ups and downs – pun intended – but the original creator of the concept never gave up on it. He never lived to see it become a widely used technology but his perseverance paid off in the end.
Jobs reflected on this process in his wonderful Stanford commencement speech which is now being widely cited in Twitterdom. Here is what he said when talking about the change he went through after being fired from Apple:
I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.
Second, it seems to me that Jobs also grasped that technology change is not just about designing elegant, exceptionally good products. It is also about coming up with business models that provide consumers new value, especially in the form of convenience, a very important thing for consumers. The iPod is the classic example. There were other music players around when the iPod came out. But the process of accessing music was complex and confusing for many consumers. So Jobs changed that by not only coming up with the iPod but with iTunes too. A new business model was born. In the process, he provided new value for the consumer and the industry, particularly the music industry.
Clayton Christiansen’s wonderful “Innovator’s Dilemma” series makes the point that innovation happens when consumers decide to adopt a new technology that does a job they need doing measurably better than what they already have. That is a higher hurdle than it might seem because again, consumers don’t really like change. They say they do but most are reluctant to do so. Psychologists say that is because humans put a higher value on losing something they already have than gaining something new that is not yet within their grasp. Getting tens of millions of consumers to adopt the iPod was no small feat and it involved, in the end, major changes in thinking about how to sell music to consumers.
This is what is so amazing about the tech industry that Steve Jobs has helped to shape through his vision. We have called it an “ecosystem” of companies from broadband providers to apps makers to device manufacturers. It is constantly changing and the business models evolve and collaboration, competition and new innovations emerge. Two new papers by Jeff Eisenach and Jonathan Sallet describe this process and the ecosystem well and are worth reading.
Finally, I think vision is a critical piece of the success of the tech sector. I am a big science fiction fan in part because good science fiction can lay out a vision of the future which might be possible and welcome in ways that no one else has thought of before. Until something can be imagined, it can’t really be designed and built. Good science fiction can imagine futures and new technologies all of us might want to have. It can also teach other lessons, some much darker. But in the end, it can and often does come up with new ways to see the future that can become a new reality over time.
Jobs reflected this in his thinking about consumers and want they want. Here is his vision of what his company’s role is in coming up with products consumer would want:
“It’s not about pop culture, and it’s not about fooling people, and it’s not about convincing people that they want something they don’t. We figure out what we want. And I think we’re pretty good at having the right discipline to think through whether a lot of other people are going to want it, too. That’s what we get paid to do. So you can’t go out and ask people, you know, what’s 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.’’’
This is very similar to the comment Wayne Gretzky made about skating to where the puck will be, not where it is. I would only quibble on one point. Consumers may not know they want a specific product – such as an iPod or iPad. I do think they have some needs they very much know they want addressed such as wanting a device that was extremely portable, one that could fit into a purse, one that had very long battery life, one that could play multimedia in airports. They know they want all of these things so the trick is making something that fulfills all of those needs, having the vision to see ahead clearly. That is what Jobs did so well.
We have a communications and computer tech sector that is producing innovation and many new and valuable services for consumers. These companies are all a part of the Internet ecosystem that is vibrant and continues to grow and amaze. Our CEO Lowell McAdam summed up what I and countless others, both consumers and industry participants, think of Steve Jobs: "Steve Jobs devoted his ceaseless energy and creative genius to technology innovation that changed the world time and time again. Our industry and all of our customers benefited tremendously from his pursuit of excellence. We will miss him. Our heartfelt condolences go to his family and his employees"