Best 2 Steve Jobs Advice : Fit in a larger vision & Start with the customer experience

The year is 1997, Steve Jobs returned to Apple after Apple acquired his new company NEXT.

Changes fit in in a cohesive larger vision.
Start with the customer experience and work backward to the technology.

Steve Jobs handling a tough question at the 1997 Worldwide Developer Conference. He had just returned to Apple as an advisor and was guiding sweeping change at the company.

Full transcript:
00:00
yes mr. jobs you’re a bright and
00:04
influential man here it comes it’s sad
00:10
and clear that on several counts you’ve
00:13
discussed you don’t know what you’re
00:14
talking about I would like for example
00:17
for you to express in clear terms how
00:20
say Java in any of its incarnations
00:24
addresses the ideas embodied in open doc
00:26
and when you’re finished with that
00:28
perhaps you could tell us what you
00:30
personally have been doing for the last
00:31
seven years
00:43
you know you can please some of the
00:47
people some of the time but
00:58
one of the hardest things when you’re
01:00
trying to affect change is that people
01:05
like this gentleman are right in some
01:09
areas I’m sure that there are some
01:11
things opendoc does probably even more
01:13
than I’m not familiar with that nothing
01:16
else out there does and I’m sure that
01:20
you can make some demos maybe a small
01:24
commercial app that demonstrates those
01:26
things the hardest thing is what how
01:31
does that fit in to a cohesive larger
01:35
vision that’s gonna allow you to sell
01:40
eight billion dollars 10 billion dollars
01:43
a product a year and one of the things
01:47
I’ve always found is that you’ve got to
01:54
start with the customer experience and
01:57
work backwards to the technology you
02:00
can’t start with the technology and try
02:03
to figure out where you’re gonna try to
02:05
sell it and I’ve made this mistake
02:07
probably more than anybody else in this
02:08
room and I’ve got the scar tissue to
02:11
prove it and I know that it’s the case
02:13
and as we have tried to come up with a
02:18
strategy and a vision for Apple it
02:24
started with what incredible benefits
02:29
can we give to the customer where can we
02:31
take the customer not not starting with
02:36
let’s sit down with the engineers and
02:38
and figure out what awesome technology
02:41
we have and then how are we going to
02:43
market that and I think that’s the right
02:48
path to take I remember with the laser
02:53
writer we built the world’s first small
02:58
laser printers you know and there was
03:00
awesome technology in that box we have
03:02
the first canon laser printing cheap
03:04
laser printing engine in the world in
03:06
the United States here at Apple we had a
03:08
very wonderful printer controller that
03:10
we design
03:11
we have Adobe’s PostScript software in
03:13
there we had Apple talk in there just
03:15
awesome technology in the box and I
03:16
remember seeing the first printout come
03:22
out of it and just picking it up and
03:25
looking at it thing you know we can sell
03:28
this because you don’t have to know
03:30
anything about what’s in that box all we
03:32
have to do is hold that something goes
03:33
do you want this and if you can remember
03:35
back to 1984 before laser printers
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it was pretty startling to see that
03:39
people went wow yes and that’s that’s
03:47
where Apple’s got to get back to and you
03:50
know I’m sorry that open Docs a casualty
03:52
along the way and I readily admit there
03:54
are many things in life that I don’t
03:56
have the faintest idea what I’m talking
03:57
about so I apologize for that too but
03:59
there’s a whole lot of people working
04:03
super super hard right now at Apple you
04:05
know avi John Marino Fred I mean the
04:09
whole team is working burning the
04:11
midnight oil trying to and and people
04:14
you know hundreds of people below them
04:16
to execute on some of these things and
04:21
they’re they’re doing their best and I
04:23
think that what we need to do and some
04:25
mistakes will be made by the way some
04:27
mistakes will be made along the way
04:28
that’s good because at least some
04:31
decisions are being made along the way
04:32
and we’ll find the mistakes we’ll fix
04:35
them and I think what we need to do is
04:38
support that team going through this
04:41
very important stage as they work their
04:43
butts off they’re all getting calls
04:45
being offered three times as much money
04:46
to go do this throughout the valleys hot
04:48
none of them are leaving and I think we
04:50
need to support them and see them
04:52
through this and write some damn good
04:54
applications to support Apple out in the
04:58
market that’s my own point of view
04:59
mistakes we made some people will be
05:02
pissed off some people will not know
05:04
what they’re talking about
05:05
but it’s I think it is so much better
05:08
than where things were not very long ago
05:11
and I think we’re gonna get there
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