Jobs, Dyson, Graham on Creativity

Relatively close together, I ended up reading Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs, James Dyson’s autobiography, and a group of essays by Paul Graham. I read each piece wanting to learn about creating new products. I saw 11 principles that each of the three either talked about or demonstrated. Here they are.

1. Turn off different kinds of filters. Graham names the shlep filter and the unsexy filter. In addition he mentions that people might dismiss ideas as toys. Dyson urges his readers to be illogical and ignore convention. Jobs was capable of doing this but didn’t offer much commentary about how he did it personally.
2. The importance of other people. All three either explicitly mention the necessity of depending on other people, or exemplified it in their work. It seems clear that with many products, you need to get other people to buy in. This was part of the genius of Steve Jobs, and why Dyson struggled for a very long time to succeed. Graham frequently mentions the importance of being in a tech hub.
3. Jobs and Dyson both stress the importance of complete control over an idea from conception to execution. This has more to do with execution than creativity. It’s also controversial. Graham doesn’t say much here (that I know of.)
4. Graham and Dyson mention getting to the frontier of a field in order to make something new. Dyson says it takes about 6 months, Graham says it takes about a year. Maybe that is a result of the different contexts in which they were writing.
5. Dyson and Jobs both emphasize focus. Dyson’s motivation seemed to be that users can’t process more than one revolutionary advance at a time, and Jobs seemed to care more about the ability to execute something extremely well. In addition, both meant it in the sense that Deiter Rams meant it: designers should strive to remove unnecessary frills from a product.
6. Time. Graham says give yourself time, Dyson took time, and Jobs took time. This requires persistence, so doing something motivating becomes particularly important. Graham points out that persistence is probably the number one determinant of success, in his experience.
7. Build. Graham and Dyson both mention that you have to go try to build things, and that is where the best ideas come from. Often the first idea is bad but you pivot.
8. Figure out what you don’t like about things as they are. All three mention this. Dyson came up with the DC1 because he didn’t like the Hoover. Graham suggests that you “pay particular attention to things that chafe you.” Jobs hated all the junky mp3 players on the market before the iPod.
9. Focus on the needs of the users, above all else. Make something that people actually need, and are willing to pay for, even if the user group is small. The key lies in empathy: seeing the problem the way the user does. Jobs, Dyson, and Graham all emphasize or exemplified this.
10. Think about solving problems, rather than creating something new.
11. Iterate. Everything gets better with iteration. All three would agree about this.

I found it interesting that these three converged to such a degree on many points. I suppose many of these have become well-accepted now. As I read the list, it reminds me of The Lean Startup. I find it all useful nonetheless. I hope you do too.