Lessons of Steve Jobs: Guy Kawasaki at TEDxUCSD

thank you very much good morning people of San Diego good go Triton's it's a real pleasure to be here thank you thank you so I am going to talk to you today about what I learned from Steve Jobs I work for Steve Jobs kind of twice in my life the first time from 1983 to 1987 in the Mac division which was the largest collection of egomaniacs in the history of Silicon Valley and that's saying a lot if you know people from Silicon Valley the second time was right after the 1997 1998 timeframe and so I had two tours of duty with Steve I will tell you that he was just the greatest influence in my life I would not be where I am without him the world is a lot less interesting place without Steve Jobs there is no question about that and so I've seen many books and many things written about Steve Jobs and I took it upon myself to write from a first-person person who was inside the reality distortion field what I learned from Steve Jobs I usually use a top 10 format but as Steve Jobs cannot be limited with these usual rules so I actually have a top 12 format today and so I'm going to pass along everything that I learned from Steve Jobs so that you may apply it to your lives your businesses your studies so that you may in fact change the world because one of the things that Steve Jobs certainly did was change the world so may he rest in peace but may his influence continue to inspire us so number one thing that I learned from Steve Jobs is that experts are usually clueless they will tell you something can't be done shouldn't be done and isn't necessary many many people in the 1983 timeframe told Apple build a bigger faster cheaper Apple to don't do anything silly like get to the next curve experts are clueless not one of them should be believed as a young person in particular do not listen to the experts listen to your heart go for it when your counter naysaying go against the naysaying you know this is what I call bozo City it was awesome is like the flu you have to inoculate yourself so that when you encounter velocity you will already have built up resistance I'm going to give you three examples of Bo's acity so you've built up the antigens to the balsa city first velocity I think there's a world market for maybe five computers the chairman of IBM allegedly said there's five computers in the world I have five computers in my house all the computers he anticipated in the world in my house this telephone has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication the device is inherently of no value to us Western Union 1876 in 1876 Western Union wrote off telephony oops Western Union should be PayPal today but it's hard to go from Telegraph to computer to Internet if you skip telephone in the middle it's too big a chasm to cross there's no reason why anyone would want a computer in their home Ken Olsen founder of Dec great entrepreneur great innovator he was so successful on the mini computer curve he could not embrace the personal computer curve number one experts are usually clueless number two customers cannot tell you what they want customers will tell you they want better faster cheaper Apple two better faster cheaper status quo better faster cheaper of what you already make nobody asked Apple for a 128 K Macintosh with no software thanks to my efforts 400 K floppy 128 km nobody asked them they wanted better faster cheaper Apple to customers usually cannot tell you what they want you have to have your vision your passion you need to jump ahead of them the way to jump ahead of then is to get to the next curve the next thing that I learned from Steve Jobs the action the true action the great innovation in the world doesn't occur on the curve you are on it occurs on the next curve classic example ice 1.0 bubba and junior would go to a frozen lake or frozen pond and cut blocks of ice in the 1900s 7 million pounds of ice was harvested in 1900 the technology at that point was horse saw sleigh frozen lake frozen on cold time of the year go out to the lake cut the ice ice 1.0 30 years later ice 2.0 ice factory now you froze water essentially big technological change now it didn't have to be winter you didn't have to be in a cold city you could have an ice factory in San Diego you can have an ice factory in Hawaii you could have an ice factory in Mumbai it could be any place big change ice 3.0 refrigerator curved now the ice man didn't have to deliver ice to your house you don't have to go to the ice factory to get your eyes you're your own personal ice factory in your house called a refrigerator a PC if you will a personal chiller the very interesting fact is that none of the ice harvesters became ice factories and none of the ice factories became refrigerator companies and why is that it's because most organizations define themselves in terms of what they already do we cut blocks of ice in the winter we freeze water essentially we make a device called a refrigerator you need to step back from what you currently do and look at the benefits you provide your customers your clients the ice business is fundamentally in the business of convenience and cleanliness and it can be done by harvesting ice but it can be done by freezing ice centrally and it can be done with your personal ice factory concentrate on the benefits not the processes of your organization the fourth thing I learned from Steve Jobs is the big challenges beget the biggest accomplishments give people what tom peters called the big hairy audacious goals when IBM came into the computer business Apple ran this ad we welcomed IBM to the computer business because we wanted to take on the biggest the most impressive the most dominant company welcome IBM seriously it was a huge goal Steve told us we want to defeat IBM we want to send IBM back to the typewriter business holding its electric balls the biggest challenge we get the biggest accomplishments number five design counts don't let people tell you that design doesn't count people care about thinness and beautifulness and aluminium not black ugly plastic laptops how many of you use a big black thick ugly laptop hold your hands up yeah you are oppressed because nobody nobody voluntarily uses a big thick black ugly laptop I feel bad for you I feel bad for you you could have something cool and thin and beautiful enough people in the world care about design design counts number six use big graphics and big fonts this is the key to pitching just do this and you'll be better than 90% of the people using PowerPoint I'll show you a great great Steve Jobs slide this is Steve Jobs slide at its best huge windows logo huge logo iTunes 150 point font the best Windows app ever written Steve Jobs with this slide is proclaiming that Apple has written the best Windows app he's using a huge logo huge font count how many words are on that slide iTunes the best Windows app ever written like seven words the key to a great PowerPoint presentation big font big graphics if you use a small font and you read your small font what happens is the audience one slide into your presentation figures out this bozo is reading his slides verbatim I can read the slides to myself faster than this bozo can read them to me so why don't I just read ahead and you lose your audience if you want a I realize this is a heavy engineering crowd I'll give you an algorithm the algorithm is figure out who the oldest person is in the audience divide his or her age by two if you're talking to 6000 people divided by two thirty points 50 year-old people divided by 225 points someday you may be pitching a 16 year old venture capital s you that they use the eight point five okay but until that they big font big graphic number seven changing your mind is a sign of intelligence many people believe that changing your mind is a sign of stupidity because you got it wrong and you don't want to admit that you're wrong you want to hide the fact that you're wrong you don't want to hold it out that you had to change your mind Steve Jobs taught me exactly the opposite this is a press release from June 11 2007 this is when iPhone was introduced our innovative approach using web 2.0 based standards lets developers create amazing new applications while keeping the iPhone secure and reliable June 11 2007 the introduction of the iPhone Steve Jobs is telling you why there can be no third party apps for an iPhone if you want to do something that adds functionality to an iPhone you have to have a Safari plug-in it's because we're doing you a favor we want you to have a phone that is secure and reliable one could logically ask at that point well Steve why do you say that the phone has to be secure and reliable but the computer doesn't why is it that they're third-party apps for the computer nevermind don't ask a year later Apple press release Apple executives to showcase Mac OS 10 leopard and OS 10 iPhone development platforms at Worldwide Developers Conference 2008 keynote one year later Steve Jobs has gone from we are going to allow no third-party apps for the iPhone 2 we now have an iPhone development platform may there be many many different kind of apps ranging from measuring your heart rate - I fart whatever it takes right this is a 180-degree reversal Steve Jobs said closed system Steve Jobs said open system twelve months later changing your mind is a sign of intelligence and just FYI when Steve Jobs in 2007 said that the iPhone had to be closed that you would have a secure and safe phone all the experts said my god Steve is right you have to have a really secure and protected phone 12 months later Steve opens up the phone and guess what the experts say my god Steve is right you want an open system so you can have an app for that number eight value is not equal to price there's a difference here Macintosh iPhone iPod any of those things I anything is not the cheapest but arguably it is the highest value this is a screenshot from an adware the windows guy had to run a bake sale to get money to support the bugs in Windows NT the Macintosh guy doesn't have to do that because there are less bugs effectively it's saying that yes a Macintosh may cost more at the front end but when you consider training and support and debugging it is a better value price is different from value try to never fight on price number nine a players higher A+ players that is a good person hires a better person not a lesser person what you'll see is that B players because of their insecurities like the higher C players they want to feel better than the person they hired the problem is when a B player has a C player it creates this downward spiral and the C player hires the deep layer and the D player hires the e player and guess what pretty soon you're surrounded by Z players this is what we call in Silicon Valley the bozo explosion you need to fight the bozo explosion this is a picture of the Macintosh division this is a reunion held about 25 years after the Macintosh some of the brightest people I've ever worked with I consider it an honor to have worked with them number 10 number 10 is that real CEOs demo they don't pass it to a VP of Engineering or a product manager or a PR weenie they do the demo great CEOs can do the demo this is a picture of Steve demonstrating the Macintosh 128k in 1984 he did the demo by himself I think many of you probably start a company one day remember this day you want to be a great CEO you have to do the demo if you cannot do the demo you are a loser do the demo number 11 real entrepreneurs ship they ship the way it works in Silicon Valley is we ship and then we test okay except biotech so one of the differences if you look at this this is a very early version of essentially a Macintosh however it came from Xerox PARC Xerox PARC pioneered the mouse graphical user interface windowing tiling drawing with the mouse all these kinds of things but there is between Apple and Xerox PARC is that Apple could ship you know there's a great song don't worry be happy by Bobby McFerrin right but really when it comes to innovation the correct song is don't worry be crappy the first Macintosh was arguably a piece of crap 128 K of ram 400 K floppy drive no software thanks to me slow printer piece of crap but it was a revolutionary piece of crap it was better than the best ms-dos machine better than the best Apple to the first laser printer arguably a piece of crap ten thousand dollars printing single-sided eight and a half by eleven slow appletalk network a piece of crap but it was so much better than the best daisy wheel printer it was okay to ship the way it works in technologies you ship and then you test real CEOs ship number twelve marketing can be distilled to one simple graph this graph has two axes on the vertical axis we measure uniqueness on the horizontal axis we measure value this is a two by two matrix if any of you go on to work for McKinsey you will learn that in a two-by-two matrix you always want the upper right-hand corner okay Mackenzie will charge you 25 grand for that so let's discuss all four corners the bottom right corner is where you create something of value but it's not unique there you have to compete on price slam operating system on the same hardware you have to compete on price the opposite corner in the opposite corner you have something truly unique only you do it but it is of no value in that corner you're just plain stupid in the bottom left corner that's what I call the dot-com corner because there you have a company like pets calm that does something that is of no value and stupid people like me funded ten other clones of pets.com so it has no value and it's not unique that's the worst corner of all but the corner you want to be in the holy grail of marketing the holy grail of entrepreneurship the holy grail of innovation the holy grail of making meaning in the world is the upper right-hand corner create something that's unique and truly valuable it's unique and truly valuable Macintosh was unique and truly valuable there are other things this is the brightening emergency watch this watch if you pull out the antenna puts out an emergency signal so you don't do this when you just take the wrong gasket you do this when you're about to die okay because if you do this there'll be a Coast Guard helicopter looking for you and Kevin Costner is going to be in the helicopter okay so but this is a watch that can save your life not many watches can save your life this watch is unique and valuable the key to all of marketing all of innovation is you need to be in that upper right-hand corner make something unique and valuable and this is my last slide and my last slide is to tell you that one of the most valuable lessons that I learned from Steve is that in life some things need to be believed to be seen usually you hear this the opposite way that in order for you to believe something you have to see it but I will tell you when it comes to changing the world what I learned from Steve Jobs is if you believe in a Macintosh if you believe in iPhone iPod iPad if you believe enough then you will see it because other people will believe in it other people will create software other people will create products so you need to foster the belief in what you are dreaming so that it becomes a reality which is very different than saying I don't expect anybody to believe it until I see it you need people to believe it before they can see it and then I'd like to wrap up you know I consider it an honor to have worked for Steve Jobs it wasn't easy it wasn't easy but it was an honor and I could tell you right now in heaven Steve Jobs is telling God what to do thank you very much thank you really thank you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 664,507

Keywords: Qualcomm, Guy Kawasaki, MBA, Technology, tedx talks, TEDxUCSD, Education, ted, Alltop, Steve Jobs, Entertainment, Lifestyle, Apple, UC San Diego, ted talk, tedx talk, Psychology, Business, English, tedx, University of California, Design, Marketing, ted x, UCSD, ted talks

Id: rWv-KoZnpKw

Length: 18min 41sec (1121 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 04 2013