I’m reading the Walter Isaacson biography of Steve Jobs in ePub form from the iTunes store. It’s a pretty good read. I hadn’t intended to read this book (I think I’m lacking what I call the “People Magazine Gene”, that makes people want to know about the personal lives of celebrities) but this was a gift so I’ve been reading it. I’m currently on chapter 35.
I’d heard many times about the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field and assumed it applied to, primarily, his product introductions and promotions. How wrong I was. He constantly used his RDF to bend people to his will. His was a very strong personality.
I am alternately appalled and amazed, astounded at the man that was Steve Jobs. Though he could turn on the charm when he wanted to, his normal mode was boorish to the point of cruelty. Yet he seemed to intuit the way to develop great products.
It was more than just a marriage of art and technology that he sought. Eschewing the standard, sequential product development paradigm: engineering -> design -> manufacturing -> marketing, he created a system in which all departments — even marketing — worked in parallel on product development. He called it “concurrent engineering” and “deep collaboration”. That is just not the way things are done, but it is brilliant.
When building a new facility for Pixar, he didn’t want the groups involved with their various projects to be isolated from each other as is done at conventional studios.
Quoting from the book:
So he had the Pixar building designed to promote encounters and unplanned collaborations. “If a building doesn’t encourage that, you’ll lose a lot of innovation and the magic that’s sparked by serendipity,” he said. “So we designed the building to make people get out of their offices and mingle in the central atrium with people they might not otherwise see.” The front doors and the main stairs and corridors all led to the atrium, the cafe and the mailboxes were there, the conference rooms had windows that looked out onto it, and the six-hundred-seat theater and two smaller screening rooms all spilled into it. “Steve’s theory worked from day one,” Lasseter recalled. “I kept running into people I hadn’t seen for months. I’ve never seen a building that promoted collaboration and creativity as well as this one.”
I am convinced that, although Steve Jobs may have micromanaged the assorted products brought to market under his reign, he also put into place the infrastructure to ensure that on-going development in his absence will receive the same collaborative treatment that has made so many Apple products such successes.
I recommend this book.