Monday 20 February 2012

Steve Jobs — 10 Take-away Points for Business

Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography
Walter Isaacson

The biography of Steve Jobs offers enormous amounts of insights into business and entrepreneurship. Surprisingly enough, these are not, per se, covered in the curricula of your typical business schools. One would ponder why that is. After all, as of few days ago, Steve Jobs built the most valuable business in the world. That is not to say that business schools do not honour his achievements (for the most part they do), but somehow they rather inconspicuously seem to use him for their own ends i.e., exemplify what they already lecture. So here are my ten take-away points from Steve Jobs’ biography that as obvious as they may appear are not what you will usually hear in a typical marketing class. There is a little bit of strategy, a little bit of vision, but, as you might have imagined, mostly it is all about the product.
  1. Push for uncompromised simplicity in product design.
  2. Release the product only when you are perfectly happy with it.
  3. Aim to build an organisation that will outlive you.
  4. Make products that you and your friends would love to use.
  5. Employ only “A-players”.
  6. In a product’s design emphasize the most important feature.
  7. Focus on the features that make a real difference for the customer.
  8. Make your “insanely great” products affordable.
  9. Control the complete customer experience.
  10. Use one product to drive the sales of others.