Background Image

...

I've Read Something That Bill Gates Said About Six Months Ago. He Said, ‘i Worked Really, Really Hard In My 20s.’ And I Know What He Means, Because I Worked Really, Really Hard In My 20s Too. Literally, You Know, 7 Days A Week, A Lot Of Hours Every Day. And It Actually Is A Wonderful Thing To Do, Because You Can Get A Lot Done. But You Can't Do It Forever, And You Don't Want To Do It Forever, And You Have To Come Up With Ways Of Figuring Out What The Most Important Things Are And Working With Other People Even More.

-Steve Jobs

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

I've Read Something That

Steve Jobs

...

I've Read Something That Bill Gates Said About Six Months Ago. He Said, ‘i Worked Really, Really Hard In My 20s.’ And I Know What He Means, Because I Worked Really, Really Hard In My 20s Too. Literally, You Know, 7 Days A Week, A Lot Of Hours Every Day. And It Actually Is A Wonderful Thing To Do, Because You Can Get A Lot Done. But You Can't Do It Forever, And You Don't Want To Do It Forever, And You Have To Come Up With Ways Of Figuring Out What The Most Important Things Are And Working With Other People Even More.

Views: 6

Topic

More From Steve Jobs

I'm As Proud Of What We Don't Do As I Am Of What We Do.

[my Teacher] Basically Bribed Me Back Into Learning With Candy And Money And What Was Really Remarkable Was Before Very Long I Had Such A Respect For Her That It Sort Of Re-ignited My Desire To Learn.

The Subscription Model Of Buying Music Is Bankrupt. I Think You Could Make Available The Second Coming In A Subscription Model And It Might Not Be Successful.

Start Small, Think Big. Don’t Worry About Too Many Things At Once. Take A Handful Of Simple Things To Begin With, And Then Progress To More Complex Ones. Think About Not Just Tomorrow, But The Future. Put A Ding In The Universe.

I Have A Great Respect For Incremental Improvement, And I've Done That Sort Of Thing In My Life, But I've Always Been Attracted To The More Revolutionary Changes. I Don't Know Why. Because They're Harder. They're Much More Stressful Emotionally. And You Usually Go Through A Period Where Everybody Tells You That You've Completely Failed.

We Try To Use The Talents We Do Have To Express Our Deep Feelings, To Show Our Appreciation Of All The Contributions That Came Before Us, And To Add Something To That Flow. That's What's Driven Me.

Management Is About Persuading People To Do Things They Do Not Want To Do, While Leadership Is About Inspiring People To Do Things They Never Thought They Could.

Remembering That I'll Be Dead Soon Is The Most Important Tool I've Ever Encountered To Help Me Make The Big Choices In Life. Because Almost Everything - All External Expectations, All Pride, All Fear Of Embarrassment Or Failure - These Things Just Fall Away In The Face Of Death, Leaving Only What Is Truly Important.

It Comes From Saying No To 1,000 Things To Make Sure We Don't Get On The Wrong Track Or Try To Do Too Much.

It's Rare That You See An Artist In His 30s Or 40s Able To Really Contribute Something Amazing. Of Course, There Are Some People Who Are Innately Curious, Forever Little Kids In Their Awe Of Life, But They're Rare.

The Juice Goes Out Of Christianity When It Becomes Too Based On Faith Rather Than On Living Like Jesus Or Seeing The World As Jesus Saw It.

We Don't Believe It's Possible To Protect Digital Content. What's New Is This Amazingly Efficient Distribution System For Stolen Property Called The Internet-- And No One's Gonna Shut Down The Internet. And It Only Takes One Stolen Copy To Be On The Internet. And The Way We Expressed It To Them Is: Pick One Lock--open Every Door. It Only Takes One Person To Pick A Lock. Worst Case: Somebody Just Takes The Analog Outputs Of Their Cd Player And Rerecords It-- Puts It On The Internet. You'll Never Stop That. So What You Have To Do Is Compete With It.

The Web Is Just Going To Be One More Of Those Major Change Factors That Businesses Face Every Decade.

Don’t Let The Noise Of Others’ Opinions Drown Out Your Own Inner Voice.

My Philosophy Is That Everything Starts With A Great Product.

Your Customers Don't Care About You. They Don't Care About Your Product Or Service. They Care About Themselves, Their Dreams, Their Goals. Now, They Will Care Much More If You Help Them Reach Their Goals, And To Do That, You Must Understand Their Goals, As Well As Their Needs And Deepest Desires.

Design Is Not Just What It Looks Like And Feels Like. Design Is How It Works.

Pointing Is A Metaphor We All Know. We've Done A Lot Of Studies And Tests On That, And It's Much Faster To Do All Kinds Of Functions, Such As Cutting And Pasting, With A Mouse, So It's Not Only Easier To Use But More Efficient.

The Japanese Have Hit The Shores Like Dead Fish. They're Just Like Dead Fish Washing Up On The Shores.

Again, You Can't Connect The Dots Looking Forward; You Can Only Connect Them Looking Backwards. So You Have To Trust That The Dots Will Somehow Connect In Your Future. You Have To Trust In Something - Your Gut, Destiny, Life, Karma, Whatever. This Approach Has Never Let Me Down, And It Has Made All The Difference In My Life.

First Was The Mouse. The Second Was The Click Wheel. And Now, We're Going To Bring Multi-touch To The Market. And Each Of These Revolutionary Interfaces Has Made Possible A Revolutionary Product - The Mac, The Ipod And Now The Iphone.

Simplicity Is The Ultimate Sophistication. It Takes A Lot Of Hard Work To Make Something Simple, To Truly Understand The Underlying Challenges And Come Up With Elegant Solutions. [...] It's Not Just Minimalism Or The Absence Of Clutter. It Involves Digging Through The Depth Of Complexity. To Be Truly Simple, You Have To Go Really Deep. [...] You Have To Deeply Understand The Essence Of A Product In Order To Be Able To Get Rid Of The Parts That Are Not Essential.

I Admire Mark Zuckerberg... For Not Selling Out, For Wanting To Make A Company. I Admire That A Lot.

Do Your Best At Every Job. Don't Sleep! Success Generates More Success So Be Hungry For It. Hire Good People With A Passion For Excellence.

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.

It's More Fun To Be A Pirate Than To Join The Navy. On The Importance Of Loving What You Do.

Loving What You Do

Be A Yardstick Of Quality. Some People Aren't Used To An Environment Where Excellence Is Expected.

Focus Is About Saying, No. And The Result Of That Focus Is Going To Be Some Really Great Products Where The Total Is Much Greater Than The Sum Of The Parts.

You Know, My Main Reaction To This Money Thing Is That It's Humorous, All The Attention To It, Because It's Hardly The Most Insightful Or Valuable Thing That's Happened To Me.

You've Got To Find What You Love. And That Is As True For Your Work As It Is For Your Lovers.

Stanford University

Everything Is Based On A Simple Rule: Quality Is The Best Business Plan, Period.

I'd Like The People Teaching My Kids To Be Good Enough That They Could Get A Job At The Company I Work For, Making A Hundred Thousand Dollars A Year. Why Should They Work At A School For Thirty-five To Forty Thousand Dollars If They Could Get A Job Here At A Hundred Thousand Dollars A Year?

Don't Settle, As With All Matters Of The Heart You'll Know When You Find It

To Me, Ideas Are Worth Nothing Unless Executed. They Are Just A Multiplier. Execution Is Worth Millions.

Fear Of Failure Falls Away In The Face Of Death.

Fear Of Failure

If You're Afraid Of Failing You Won't Get Very Far

Remembering That I’ll Be Dead Soon Is The Most Important Tool I’ve Ever Encountered To Help Make The Big Choices In Life. Remembering That You Are Going To Die Is The Best Way I Know To Avoid The Trap Of Thinking You Have Something To Lose.

Stanford University

Death Is Very Likely The Single Best Invention Of Life. It Is Life's Change Agent. It Clears Out The Old To Make Way For The New.

To Do Anything Of Magnitude Takes At Least Five Years, More Likely Seven Or Eight. Rightfully Or Wrongfully, That's How I Think.

Making An Enduring Company Was Both Harder And More Important Than Making A Great Product.

You Have To Trust That The Dots Will Somehow Connect In Your Future... 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... Have The Courage To Follow Your Heart And Intuition. They Somehow Already Know What You Truly Want To Become. Everything Else Is Secondary.

Of Course It Was Impossible To Connect The Dots Looking Forward When I Was In College. But It Was Very, Very Clear Looking Backwards 10 Years Later.

I Buy Everything From Costco. It's Great; They've Got Everything I Need.

You‘ve Got To Start With The Customer Experience And Work Back Toward The Technology - Not The Other Way Around.

Every Once In A While A Revolutionary Product Comes Along That Changes Everything. It's Very Fortunate If You Can Work On Just One Of These In Your Career. ... Apple's Been Very Fortunate In That It's Introduced A Few Of These.

We Hire People Who Want To Make The Best Things In The World.

If You Live Each Day As It Was Your Last, Someday You'll Most Certainly Be Right

Stanford University

Do Not Try To Do Everything. Do One Thing Well.

I Don't Think I've Ever Worked So Hard On Something, But Working On Macintosh Was The Neatest Experience Of My Life. Almost Everyone Who Worked On It Will Say That. None Of Us Wanted To Release It At The End. It Was As Though We Knew That Once It Was Out Of Our Hands, It Wouldn't Be Ours Anymore.

Do You Create Anything, Or Just Criticize Others Work And Belittle Their Motivations?

Click. Boom. Amazing!

Here's To The Crazy Ones, The Misfits, The Rebels, The Troublemakers, The Round Pegs In The Square Holes... The Ones Who See Things Differently - They're Not Fond Of Rules... You Can Quote Them, Disagree With Them, Glorify Or Vilify Them, But The Only Thing You Can't Do Is Ignore Them Because They Change Things... They Push The Human Race Forward, And While Some May See Them As The Crazy Ones, We See Genius, Because The Ones Who Are Crazy Enough To Think That They Can Change The World, Are The Ones Who Do.

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.

Do You Want To Sell Sugar Water All Your Life, Or Do You Want To Come With Me And Change The World?

Focusing Is About Saying No.

We Don't Have A Good Language To Talk About This Kind Of Thing. In Most People's Vocabularies, Design Means Veneer... But To Me, Nothing Could Be Further From The Meaning Of Design. Design Is The Fundamental Soul Of A Man-made Creation.

I Sat In A Garage And Invented The Future.

The Creative Industries Tend To Dismiss Technology As Just Something To Buy And Not Understand How Hard It Is And How Creative It Can Be As Well.

It's Really Hard To Design Products By Focus Groups. A Lot Of Times, People Don't Know What They Want Until You Show It To Them.

The Problem Is I'm Older Now, I'm 40 Years Old, And This Stuff Doesn't Change The World. It Really Doesn't.

The People Who Built Silicon Valley Were Engineers. They Learned Business, They Learned A Lot Of Different Things, But They Had A Real Belief That Humans, If They Worked Hard With Other Creative, Smart People, Could Solve Most Of Humankind's Problems. I Believe That Very Much.

Ask For Feedback From People With Diverse Backgrounds. Each One Will Tell You One Useful Thing. If You're At The Top Of The Chain, Sometimes People Won't Give You Honest Feedback Because They're Afraid. In This Case, Disguise Yourself, Or Get Feedback From Other Sources.

Honest Feedback

I Think The Biggest Innovations Of The 21st Century Will Be At The Intersection Of Biology And Technology. A New Era Is Beginning.

Don't Just Live A Life; Build One.

It Took Us Three Years To Build The Next Computer. If We'd Given Customers What They Said They Wanted, We'd Have Built A Computer They'd Have Been Happy With A Year After We Spoke To Them - Not Something They'd Want Now.

Believe Things Will Work Out. How Was I Ever To Know That The Girl Who Broke My Heart In University Would Lead To My Soulmate? How Was I To Know That The ‘dream Job’ I Was Rejected From Out Of College Would Lead Me To A Year Of Entrepreneurship And Adventure In Spain? How Was I To Know That Taking A Miserable Job Back In The States Would Be Just The Push I Needed To Vow To Never Do Something I Wasn’t Passionate About Again? Everything Works Out. I Mean Everything. As Long As You Believe It Will. When You Do, You Will Find The Silver Lining. That Will Take You To The Next Level.

Now, We Are Selling Over 5 Million Songs A Day Now. Isn't That Unbelievable? That's 58 Songs Every Second Of Every Minute Of Every Hour Of Every Day.

The Problem With The Internet Startup Craze Isn’t That Too Many People Are Starting Companies; It’s That Too Many People Aren’t Sticking With It.

I Naively Chose A College That Was Almost As Expensive As Stanford, And All Of My Working-class Parents Savings Were Being Spent On My College Tuition. After Six Months I Couldn't See The Value In It. I Had No Idea What I Wanted To Do With My Life And No Idea How College Was Going To Help Me Figure It Out.

If I Had Never Dropped In On That Single Course In College, The Mac Would Have Never Had Multiple Typefaces Or Proportionally Spaced Fonts. And Since Windows Just Copied The Mac, It's Likely That No Personal Computer Would Have Them. If I Had Never Dropped Out, I Would Have Never Dropped In On This Calligraphy Class, And Personal Computers Might Not Have The Wonderful Typography That They Do. Of Course It Was Impossible To Connect The Dots Looking Forward When I Was In College. But It Was Very, Very Clear Looking Backward 10 Years Later.

Stanford University

Taking Lsd Was A Profound Experience, One Of The Most Important Things In My Life. Lsd Shows You That There’s Another Side To The Coin, And You Can’t Remember It When It Wears Off, But You Know It. It Reinforced My Sense Of What Was Important—creating Great Things Instead Of Making Money, Putting Things Back Into The Stream Of History And Of Human Consciousness As Much As I Could.

To Turn Really Interesting Ideas And Fledgling Technologies Into A Company That Can Continue To Innovate For Years, It Requires A Lot Of Disciplines.

Ad Campaigns Are Necessary For Competition. But Good Pr Educates People; That's All It Is.

I Would Rather Gamble On Our Vision Than Make A 'me, Too' Product.

I Think The Macintosh Was Created By A Group Of People Who Felt That Ah There Wasn't A Strict Vision Between Sort Of Science And Art.

Most People Make The Mistake Of Thinking Design Is What It Looks Like. People Think It's This Veneer - That The Designers Are Handed This Box And Told, 'make It Look Good!' That's Not What We Think Design Is. It's Not Just What It Looks Like And Feels Like. Design Is How It Works.

It's Hard To Tell With These Internet Startups If They're Really Interested In Building Companies Or If They're Just Interested In The Money. I Can Tell You, Though: If They Don't Really Want To Build A Company, They Won't Luck Into It. That's Because It's So Hard That If You Don't Have A Passion, You'll Give Up.

You Can Tell A Lot About A Person By Who His Or Her Heroes Are.

Forget Everything

If You Tell People They Can't Burn Cds Of Their Music, As Almost Every Current Legal Music Service Has Done, Or They Can Only Burn One Cd With A Track Or Pay Per Track Per Burn Extra, Nobody Is Going To Go For It.

Great Things In Business Are Never Done By One Person, They're Done By A Team Of People.

Recruiting Is Hard. It's Just Finding The Needles In The Haystack. You Can't Know Enough In A One-hour Interview. So, In The End, It's Ultimately Based On Your Gut. How Do I Feel About This Person? What Are They Like When They're Challenged? I Ask Everybody That: 'why Are You Here?' The Answers Themselves Are Not What You're Looking For. It's The Meta-data.

The Most Important Thing Is A Person. A Person Who Incites Your Curiosity And Feeds Your Curiosity; And Machines Cannot Do That In The Same Way That People Can.

Creativity Is Just Connecting Things. When You Ask Creative People How They Did Something, They Feel A Little Guilty Because They Didn't Really Do It, They Just Saw Something. It Seemed Obvious To Them After A While. That's Because They Were Able To Connect Experiences They've Had And Synthesize New Things.

I Had Been Rejected, But I Was Still In Love.

If You Haven't Found It Yet, Keep Looking.

Inspirational Life

Pursue Your Dreams And See The Opportunities In Life's Setbacks.

It Is Hard To Think That A $2 Billion Company With 4,300-plus People Couldn't Compete With Six People In Blue Jeans.

The Engineering Is Long Gone In Most Pc Companies. In The Consumer Electronics Companies, They Don't Understand The Software Parts Of It. And So You Really Can't Make The Products That You Can Make At Apple Anywhere Else Right Now. Apple's The Only Company That Has Everything Under One Roof.

When You Start Looking At A Problem And It Seems Really Simple, You Don't Really Understand The Complexity Of The Problem. Then You Get Into The Problem, And You See That It's Really Complicated, And You Come Up With All These Convoluted Solutions. That's Sort Of The Middle, And That's Where Most People Stop... But The Really Great Person Will Keep On Going And Find The Key, The Underlying Principle Of The Problem - And Come Up With An Elegant, Really Beautiful Solution That Works.

The Design Of The Mac Wasn't What It Looked Like, Although That Was Part Of It. Primarily, It Was How It Worked. To Design Something Really Well, You Have To Get It. You Have To Really Grok What It's All About. It Takes A Passionate Commitment To Really Thoroughly Understand Something, Chew It Up, Not Just Quickly Swallow It.

Design Is The Fundamental Soul Of A Man-made Creation

You Can't Just Ask Customers What They Want And Then Try To Give That To Them. By The Time You Get It Built, They'll Want Something New.

I Hate The Way People Use Powerpoints Instead Of Thinking

The Desktop Computer Industry Is Dead. Innovation Has Virtually Ceased. Microsoft Dominates With Very Little Innovation. That's Over. Apple Lost. The Desktop Market Has Entered The Dark Ages, And It's Going To Be In The Dark Ages For The Next 10 Years, Or Certainly For The Rest Of This Decade.

If I Had Never Dropped In On That Single Course In College, The Mac Would Have Never Had Multiple Typefaces Or Proportionally Spaced Fonts. And Since Windows Just Copied The Mac, It's Likely That No Personal Computer Would Have Them.

Stanford University

It [what You Choose To Do] Has Got To Be Something That You're Passionate About Because Otherwise You Won't Have The Perseverance To See It Through.

My Opinion Is That The Only Two Computer Companies That Are Software-driven Are Apple And Next, And I Wonder About Apple.

We Don't Settle For Anything Less Than Excellence.

How Can You Get Fired From The Company You Started?

The Most Important Decisions You Make Are Not The Things You Do, But The Things You Decide Not To Do.

Decisions You Make

Listen To Me. We're Here To Make A Dent In The Universe. Otherwise Why Even Be Here?

I Told [bill Gates] I Believed Every Word Of What I Said But That I Should Never Have Said It In Public. I Wish Him The Best, I Really Do. I Just Think He And Microsoft Are A Bit Narrow. He'd Be A Broader Guy If He Had Dropped Acid Once Or Gone Off To An Ashram When He Was Younger.

For You To Sleep Well At Night, The Aesthetic, The Quality, Has To Be Carried All The Way Through.

We Live In An Information Economy. The Problem Is That Information's Usually Impossible To Get, At Least In The Right Place, At The Right Time.

The Best Way To Create Value In The 21st Century Is To Connect Creativity With Technology

Simplicity Is The Ultimate Sophistication-- Steve Jobs Turned This Into The Slogan Behind An Early Mac Advertising Campaign. Which Doesn't Make It Less True.

No One Is Going To Buy A Big Phone.

No One Wants To Die. Even People Who Want To Go To Heaven Don't Want To Die To Get There.

Stanford University

When You Have Feelings Like Sadness Or Anger About Your Cancer Or Your Plight, To Mask Them Is To Lead An Artificial Life.

At Apple, People Are Putting In 18-hour Days. We Attract A Different Type Of Person—a Person Who Doesn’t Want To Wait Five Or Ten Years To Have Someone Take A Giant Risk On Him Or Her. Someone Who Really Wants To Get In A Little Over His Head And Make A Little Dent In The Universe. We Are Aware That We Are Doing Something Significant. We’re Here At The Beginning Of It And We’re Able To Shape How It Goes. Everyone Here Has The Sense That Right Now Is One Of Those Moments When We Are Influencing The Future.

Somebody Once Told Me, ‘manage The Top Line, And The Bottom Line Will Follow.’ What's The Top Line? It's Things Like, Why Are We Doing This In The First Place? What's Our Strategy? What Are Customers Saying? How Responsive Are We? Do We Have The Best Products And The Best People? Those Are The Kind Of Questions You Have To Focus On.

Pixar Is The Most Technically Advanced Creative Company; Apple Is The Most Creatively Advanced Technical Company.

My Model For Business Is The Beatles. They Were Four Guys Who Kept Each Other Kind Of Negative Tendencies In Check. They Balanced Each Other And The Total Was Greater Than The Sum Of The Parts. That's How I See Business: Great Things In Business Are Never Done By One Person, They're Done By A Team Of People.

Customers Always Want Something New

When I Went To School, It Was Right After The '60s And Before This General Wave Of Practical Purposefulness Had Set In.... The Idealistic Wind Of The '60s Was Still At Our Backs, Though, And Most Of The People I Know Who Are My Age Have That Engrained In Them Forever.

I Found That There Were These Incredibly Great People At Doing Certain Things, And You Couldn't Replace One Of These People With Fifty Average People.

With Our Technology, With Objects, Literally Three People In A Garage Can Blow Away What 200 People At Microsoft Can Do. Literally Can Blow It Away. Corporate America Has A Need That Is So Huge And Can Save Them So Much Money, Or Make Them So Much Money, Or Cost Them So Much Money If They Miss It, That They Are Going To Fuel The Object Revolution.

You Need To Have A Collaborative Hiring Process.

A Computer Is The Most Incredible Tool We've Ever Seen. It Can Be A Writing Tool, A Communications Center, A Supercalculator, A Planner, A Filer And An Artistic Instrument All In One, Just By Being Given New Instructions, Or Software, To Work From. There Are No Other Tools That Have The Power And Versatility Of A Computer.

Focus Does Not Mean Saying Yes, It Means Saying No.

Our Goal Is To Make The Best Devices In The World, Not To Be The Biggest.

Your Work Is Going To Fill A Large Part Of Your Life... So Love What You Do. Your Time Is Limited. Don't Waste It.

We've Had One Of These Before, When The Dot-com Bubble Burst. What I Told Our Company Was That We Were Just Going To Invest Our Way Through The Downturn, That We Weren't Going To Lay Off People, That We'd Taken A Tremendous Amount Of Effort To Get Them Into Apple In The First Place; The Last Thing We Were Going To Do Is Lay Them Off.

You've Probably Had Somebody Punch You In The Stomach And It Knocks The Wind Of You And You Can't Breathe. That's How I Felt.

I Wish Developing Great Products Was As Easy As Writing A Check. If That Was The Case, Microsoft Would Have Great Products.

You've Got To Have A Problem That You Want To Solve; A Wrong That You Want To Right.

Focus And Simplicity...once You Get There, You Can Move Mountains.

Innovation Has Nothing To Do With How Many R&d Dollars You Have. When Apple Came Up With The Mac, Ibm Was Spending At Least 100 Times More On R&d. It's Not About Money. It's About The People You Have, How You're Led, And How Much You Get It.

You'll See More And More Perfection Of That - Computer As Servant. But The Next Thing Is Going To Be Computer As A Guide Or Agent.

When You're In A Start-up, The First Ten People Will Determine Whether The Company Succeeds Or Not. Each Is 10 Percent Of The Company. So Why Wouldn't You Take As Much Time As Necessary To Find All The A Players? If Three Were Not So Great, Why Would You Want A Company Where 30 Percent Of Your People Are Not So Great? A Small Company Depends On Great People Much More Than A Big Company Does.

Don't Be Evil Is A Load Of Crap.

The Biggest Effect Of The Personal Computer Revolution Has Been To Allow Millions And Millions Of People To Experience Computers Themselves Decades Before They Ever Would Have In The Old Paradigm.

By Honoring The Lives Of Those We Admire, We Make Our Own Values Known.

The System Is That There Is No System. That Doesn't Mean We Don't Have Process. Apple Is A Very Disciplined Company, And We Have Great Processes. But That's Not What It's About. Process Makes You More Efficient ... But Innovation Comes From People Meeting Up In The Hallways Or Calling Each Other At 10:30 At Night With A New Idea, Or Because They Realized Something That Shoots Holes In How We've Been Thinking About A Problem. It's Ad Hoc Meetings Of Six People Called By Someone Who Thinks He Has Figured Out The Coolest New Thing Ever And Who Wants To Know What Other People Think Of His Idea.

Many Companies Forget What It Means To Make Great Products. After Initial Success, Sales And Marketing People Take Over And The Product People Eventually Make Their Way Out.

Innovation Distinguishes Between A Leader And A Follower.

If You Want To Live Your Life In A Creative Way, As An Artist, You Have To Not Look Back Too Much. You Have To Be Willing To Take Whatever You've Done And Whoever You Were And Throw Them Away.

When You’re In A Startup, The First Ten People Will Determine Whether The Company Succeeds Or Not.

You Know, I've Got A Plan That Could Rescue Apple. I Can't Say Any More Than That It's The Perfect Product And The Perfect Strategy For Apple. But Nobody There Will Listen To Me.

The Web Is Not Going To Change The World, Certainly Not In The Next 10 Years. It's Going To Augment The World. And Once You're In This Web-augmented Space, You're Going To See That Democratization Takes Place.

When I Was Young, There Was An Amazing Publication Called The Whole Earth Catalog, Which Was One Of The Bibles Of My Generation. It Was Created By A Fellow Named Stewart Brand Not Far From Here In Menlo Park, And He Brought It To Life With His Poetic Touch. This Was In The Late 1960's, Before Personal Computers And Desktop Publishing, So It Was All Made With Typewriters, Scissors, And Polaroid Cameras. It Was Sort Of Like Google In Paperback Form, 35 Years Before Google Came Along: It Was Idealistic, And Overflowing With Neat Tools And Great Notions.

Stanford University

You're Missing It. This Is Not A One-man Show. What's Reinvigorating This Company Is Two Things: One, There's A Lot Of Really Talented People In This Company Who Listened To The World Tell Them They Were Losers For A Couple Of Years, And Some Of Them Were On The Verge Of Starting To Believe It Themselves. But They're Not Losers. What They Didn't Have Was A Good Set Of Coaches, A Good Plan. A Good Senior Management Team. But They Have That Now.

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. You Have To Pick Carefully. I'm Actually As Proud Of The Things We Haven't Done As The Things I Have Done. Innovation Is Saying No To 1,000 Things.

I Think We're Having Fun. I Think Our Customers Really Like Our Products. And We're Always Trying To Do Better.

Breakthrough Is How To Distinguish A Leader And Who Followed

Creativity Is Just Connecting Things.

There Will Always Be Music On The Internet That People Can Steal. What's New Is Not Theft. What's New Is A Distribution Channel For Stolen Property Called The Internet. So There Will Always Be Illegal Music On The Internet.

My Mother Taught Me To Read Before I Went To School, So I Was Pretty Bored In School, And I Turned Into A Little Terror. You Should Have Seen Us In Third Grade. We Basically Destroyed Our Teacher. We Would Let Snakes Loose In The Classroom And Explode Bombs.

I've Always Wanted To Own And Control The Primary Technology In Everything We Do.

I'm Not Worried About The Country's Long-term Future. This Country Is Insanely Great. What I'm Worried About Is That We Don't Talk Enough About Solutions.

Most People Never Pick Up The Phone And Call. Most People Never Ask, And That’s What Separates The People Who Do Things From The People Who Just Dream About Them.

I Was At Reed [college] For Only A Few Months. My Parents Intended For Me To Stay There For All Four Years But I Decided That College Wasn't Right For Me. I Had No Idea What I Wanted To Do I Didn't See How College Was Going To Help Me.

We Had The Hardware Expertise, The Industrial Design Expertise And The Software Expertise, Including Itunes. One Of The Biggest Insights We Have Was That We Decided Not To Try To Manage Your Music Library On The Ipod, But To Manage It In Itunes. Other Companies Tried To Do Everything On The Device Itself And Made It So Complicated That It Was Useless.

The Day I Was Born Songs Were On Records, Phones Were Tied Down, Computers Needed Rooms And The Web Was Fiction. Change The World. You Can.

Our Approach Is To Think Of Companies Not As Businesses But As Collections Of People. We [apple]want To Qualitatively Change The Way People Work. We Don't Just Want To Help Them Do Word Processing Faster Or Add Numbers Faster. We Want To Change The Way They Can Communicate With One Another. We're Seeing Less Paper Flying Around And More Quality Of Communication.

If You Keep Your Eye On The Profit, You’re Going To Skimp On The Product. But If You Focus On Making Really Great Products, Then The Profits Will Follow.

We Don't Get A Chance To Do That Many Things, And Every One Should Be Really Excellent. Because This Is Our Life. Life Is Brief, And Then You Die, You Know? So This Is What We've Chosen To Do With Our Life.

You Are All Over The Map, Figure Out The Top 5 Things You Want To Focus On And Get Rid Of The Rest.

No One Wants To Die. Even People Who Want To Go To Heaven Don't Want To Die To Get There. And Yet Death Is The Destination We All Share. No One Has Ever Escaped It. And That Is As It Should Be, Because Death Is Very Likely The Single Best Invention Of Life. It Is Life's Change Agent. It Clears Out The Old To Make Way For The New.

Stanford University

People Say Sometimes, "you Work In The Fastest-moving Industry In The World." I Don't Feel That Way. I Think I Work In One Of The Slowest. It Seems To Take Forever To Get Anything Done.

I'm An Optimist In The Sense That I Believe Humans Are Noble And Honorable, And Some Of Them Are Really Smart. I Have A Very Optimistic View Of Individuals.

Technology Is Nothing. What's Important Is That You Have A Faith In People, That They're Basically Good And Smart, And If You Give Them Tools, They'll Do Wonderful Things With Them.

Each Year Has Been So Robust With Problems And Successes And Learning Experiences And Human Experienes That A Year Is A Lifetime At Apple. So This Has Been Ten Lifetimes.

The Roots Of Apple Were To Build Computers For People, Not For Corporations. The World Doesn't Need Another Dell Or Compaq.

It Places Value On Experience Versus Intellectual Understanding. I Saw A Lot Of People Contemplating Things But It Didn't Seem To Lead To Too Many Places. I Got Very Interested In People Who Had Discovered Something More Significant Than An Intellectual, Abstract Understanding.

Let's Make A Dent In The Universe

Some Mistakes Will Be Made Along The Way. That's Good. Because Some Decisions Are Being Made Along The Way. We'll Find The Mistakes. We'll Fix Them.

I Used To Sleep On The Floor In Friends' Rooms, Returning Coke Bottles For Food, Money, And Getting Weekly Free Meals At A Local Temple

We Did Not Enter The Search Business. Google Entered The Phone Business. Make No Mistake They Want To Kill The Iphone. We Won't Let Them.

There Are Downsides To Everything; There Are Unintended Consequences To Everything.

Unintended Consequences

As Regis Mckenna Once Said, The Best Marketing Is Education

You've Got To Find What You Love.

Stanford University

Love What You Do...don't Settle

The Broader One's Understanding Of The Human Experience, The Better Design We Will Have.

I Feel Like Somebody Just Punched Me In The Stomach And Knocked All My Wind Out. I'm Only 30 Years Old And I Want To Have A Chance To Continue Creating Things. I Know I've Got At Least One More Great Computer In Me. And Apple Is Not Going To Give Me A Chance To Do That.

Creating Things

You've Heard Of Plug-and-play. This Is Plug, Unplug And Play. It's So Simple To Use, It's Unbelievable.

Great Art Stretches The Taste, It Doesn't Follow Tastes.

I Think This Is The Start Of Something Really Big. Sometimes That First Step Is The Hardest One, And We've Just Taken It.

Stealing Things Is Everybody's Problem. We [apple Inc.] Own A Lot Of Intellectual Property, And We Don't Like When People Steal It. So People Are Stealing Stuff And We're Optimists. We Believe That 80 Percent Of The People Stealing Stuff Don't Want To Be; There's Just No Legal Alternative.

Stealing Things

It Takes These Very Simple-minded Instructions - 'go Fetch A Number, Add It To This Number, Put The Result There, Perceive If It's Greater Than This Other Number' - But Executes Them At A Rate Of, Let's Say, 1,000,000 Per Second. At 1,000,000 Per Second, The Results Appear To Be Magic.

In Most Cases, Strengths And Weaknesses Are Two Sides Of The Same Coin. A Strength In One Situation Is A Weakness In Another, Yet Often The Person Can't Switch Gears. It's A Very Subtle Thing To Talk About Strengths And Weaknesses Because Almost Always They're The Same Thing.

So Let's Not Use A Stylus. We're Going To Use The Best Pointing Device In The World. We're Going To Use A Pointing Device That We're All Born With - Born With Ten Of Them. We're Going To Use Our Fingers. We're Going To Touch This With Our Fingers. And We Have Invented A New Technology Called Multi-touch, Which Is Phenomenal. It Works Like Magic.

Innovation Is The Ability To See Change As An Opportunity - Not A Threat

In Order To Learn How To Do Something Well, You Have To Fail Sometimes. In Order To Fail, There Has To Be A Measurement System. And That's The Problem With Most Philanthropy - There's No Measurement System. You Give Somebody Some Money To Do Something And Most Of The Time You Can Really Never Measure Whether You Failed Or Succeeded In Your Judgment Of That Person Or His Ideas Or Their Implementation.

The Difference Between The Best Worker On Computer Hardware And The Average May Be 2 To 1, If You're Lucky. With Automobiles, Maybe 2 To 1. But In Software, It's At Least 25 To 1. The Difference Between The Average Programmer And A Great One Is At Least That. The Secret Of My Success Is That We Have Gone To Exceptional Lengths To Hire The Best People In The World. And When You're In A Field Where The Dynamic Range Is 25 To 1, Boy, Does It Pay Off.

We Think The Mac Will Sell Zillions, But We Didn't Build The Mac For Anybody Else. We Built It For Ourselves. We Were The Group Of People Who Were Going To Judge Whether It Was Great Or Not. We Weren't Going To Go Out And Do Market Research. We Just Wanted To Build The Best Thing We Could Build.

I'm Convinced That About Half Of What Separates Successful Entrepreneurs From The Non-successful Ones Is Pure Perseverance.

A Lot Of People In Our Industry Haven't Had Very Diverse Experiences. So They Don't Have Enough Dots To Connect, And They End Up With Very Linear Solutions Without A Broad Perspective On The Problem. The Broader One's Understanding Of The Human Experience, The Better Design We Will Have.

The Macintosh Was Supposed To Be The Computer For People That Just Wanted To Use A Computer Without Having To Learn How To Use One.

It Wasn't That Microsoft Was So Brilliant Or Clever In Copying The Mac, It's That The Mac Was A Sitting Duck For 10 Years. That's Apple's Problem: Their Differentiation Evaporated.

Great Engineers Are A Huge Multiplier.

So When These People Sell Out, Even Though They Get Fabulously Rich, They're Gypping Themselves Out Of One Of The Potentially Most Rewarding Experiences Of Their Unfolding Lives. Without It, They May Never Know Their Values Or How To Keep Their Newfound Wealth In Perspective.

I Was Lucky To Get Into Computers When It Was A Very Young And Idealistic Industry. There Weren't Many Degrees Offered In Computer Science, So People In Computers Were Brilliant People From Mathematics, Physics, Music, Zoology, Whatever. They Loved It, And No One Was Really In It For The Money.

You Know, Dr. Edwin Land Was A Troublemaker. He Dropped Out Of Harvard And Founded Polaroid. Not Only Was He One Of The Great Inventors Of Our Time But, More Important, He Saw The Intersection Of Art And Science And Business And Built An Organization To Reflect That. Polaroid Did That For Some Years, But Eventually Dr. Land, One Of Those Brilliant Troublemakers, Was Asked To Leave His Own Company - Which Is One Of The Dumbest Things I've Ever Heard Of.

It's Understandable That The Music Companies That Are Comprised Of People That Are Successful By Making Good Creative Decisions - They Have To Decide Which Out Of Fifty Artists Is The Next Hot One, With No Data To Go From. It's An Intuitive Process, And That's What They Do Well When They're Successful. They Don't Understand Technology.

Don't Be Afraid, You Can Do It.

You Cannot Mandate Productivity, You Must Provide The Tools To Let People Become Their Best.

You've Got To Start With The Customer Experience And Work Backwards To The Technology. You Can't Start With The Technology And Try To Figure Out Where You're Going To Sell It.

When We Hire Someone, Even If They Are Going To Be In Marketing, I Will Have Them Talk To The Design Folks And The Engineers.

Of Course, We Can Not Connect Imprint Future, You Can Just Hook Them To Look Back. So Rest Assured That The Dots, The Events In Your Life In One Way Or Another Will Affect Your Future. You Have To Have Faith In Something - The Courage, Destiny, Life, Destiny Or Whatever - Thinking That Has Made The Difference In My Life

Trending Author

Kristin Cavallari

Daniel D. Palmer

Category