Having a Great Idea Isn’t Enough
The road from idea to product is where the magic happens
In 1995 Robert Cringely asked Steve Jobs a simple question: “What’s important to you in the development of a product?” Jobs’s response was anything short of visionary:
Transcript
Jobs: “You know, one of the things that really hurt Apple was after I left John Sculley got a very serious disease. And that disease — I’ve seen other people get it, too — it’s the disease of thinking that a really great idea is 90% of the work. And that if you just tell all these other people, ‘Here’s this great idea,’ then of course they can go off and make it happen.
“And the problem with that is that there’s just a tremendous amount of craftsmanship in between a great idea and a great product. And as you evolve that great idea, it changes and grows. It never comes out like it starts because you learn a lot more as you get into the subtleties of it. And you also find there are tremendous trade-offs that you have to make. There are just certain things you can’t make electrons do. There are certain things you can’t make plastic do. Or glass do. Or factories do. Or robots do.
“And as you get into all these things, designing a product is keeping five thousand things in your brain — these concepts — and fitting them all together in new and different ways to get what you want. And every day you discover something new that is a new problem or a new opportunity to fit these things together a little differently.
“And it’s that process that is the magic.”
