“The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”
—Apple’s “Think Different” commercial, 1997
那些瘋狂到認(rèn)為他們可以改變世界的人正是那些改變世界的人
-- 蘋果“不同凡想”的商業(yè)， 1997年
His saga is the entrepreneurial creation myth writ large: Steve Jobs cofounded Apple in his parents’ garage in 1976, was ousted in 1985, returned to rescue it from near bankruptcy in 1997, and by the time he died, in October 2011, had built it into the world’s most valuable company. Along the way he helped to transform seven industries: personal computing, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, retail stores, and digital publishing. He thus belongs in the pantheon of America’s great innovators, along with Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and Walt Disney. None of these men was a saint, but long after their personalities are forgotten, history will remember how they applied imagination to technology and business.
他的傳奇故事是企業(yè)家創(chuàng)造的神話：1976年，史蒂夫喬布斯在父母的車庫中創(chuàng)立了蘋果公司，并于1985年被趕下臺，1997年他從瀕臨破產(chǎn)的邊緣拯救了蘋果，到2011年10月去世的時候，他已經(jīng)把它建成了世界上最有價值的公司。在此過程中，他幫助改變了7個行業(yè)：個人電腦、動畫電影、音樂、手機(jī)、平板電腦、零售商店和數(shù)字出版。他因此與托馬斯·愛迪生、亨利·福特和沃爾特·迪斯尼一起屬于美國偉大的革新者。他們都不是圣人，但在他們的個性被遺忘很久之后，歷史將會記住他們是如何將想象力運用到科技和商業(yè)上的。
In the months since my biography of Jobs came out, countless commentators have tried to draw management lessons from it. Some of those readers have been insightful, but I think that many of them (especially those with no experience in entrepreneurship) fixate too much on the rough edges of his personality. The essence of Jobs, I think, is that his personality was integral to his way of doing business. He acted as if the normal rules didn’t apply to him, and the passion, intensity, and extreme emotionalism he brought to everyday life were things he also poured into the products he made. His petulance and impatience were part and parcel of his perfectionism.
在我的關(guān)于喬布斯傳記出版后的幾個月里，無數(shù)的評論家都試圖根據(jù)它規(guī)劃管理課程。其中一些讀者是有洞察力的，但我認(rèn)為他們中的許多人（尤其是那些沒有創(chuàng)業(yè)經(jīng)驗的人）在他個性的粗糙邊緣上太過關(guān)注。我認(rèn)為，喬布斯的本質(zhì)是他的個性決定了他做生意的方式。他的行為就好像正常的規(guī)則并不適用于他，他給日常生活帶來的激情、強(qiáng)度和極端的情感主義，都是他在他的產(chǎn)品中傾注的東西。他的任性和不耐煩是他完美主義的一部分。
One of the last times I saw him, after I had finished writing most of the book, I asked him again about his tendency to be rough on people. “Look at the results,” he replied. “These are all smart people I work with, and any of them could get a top job at another place if they were truly feeling brutalized. But they don’t.” Then he paused for a few moments and said, almost wistfully, “And we got some amazing things done.” Indeed, he and Apple had had a string of hits over the past dozen years that was greater than that of any other innovative company in modern times: iMac, iPod, iPod nano, iTunes Store, Apple Stores, MacBook, iPhone, iPad, App Store, OS X Lion—not to mention every Pixar film. And as he battled his final illness, Jobs was surrounded by an intensely loyal cadre of colleagues who had been inspired by him for years and a very loving wife, sister, and four children.
最后一次我見到他時，我已經(jīng)寫完了這本書的大部分內(nèi)容，我又問了他關(guān)于他對待員工很苛刻的事?！翱纯唇Y(jié)果，”他回答，“和我工作這些人都是聰明人，如果他們真的感到被殘酷對待，他們中的任何一個都能在另一個地方找到一份高級工作。但是他們沒有?！比缓笏Ａ艘粫?，近乎激動地說，“我們完成了一些讓人大吃一驚的事情。” 事實上，他和蘋果在過去的十幾年里經(jīng)歷了一系列的成功，比現(xiàn)代任何一家創(chuàng)新公司都要大：iMac、iPod、iPod nano、iTunes商店、蘋果商店、MacBook、iPhone、iPad、應(yīng)用商店、OS X Lion，更別提皮克斯的每一部電影了。當(dāng)他最后與病魔作斗爭時，喬布斯身邊圍繞著一群忠心耿耿的同事，這些人多年來一直受到他的啟發(fā)，還有一個非常愛他的妻子、他的姐姐和他的四個孩子。
So I think the real lessons from Steve Jobs have to be drawn from looking at what he actually accomplished. I once asked him what he thought was his most important creation, thinking he would answer the iPad or the Macintosh. Instead he said it was Apple the company. Making an enduring company, he said, was both far harder and more important than making a great product. How did he do it? Business schools will be studying that question a century from now. Here are what I consider the keys to his success.
所以我認(rèn)為，從史蒂夫·喬布斯那里得到的真正的教訓(xùn)必須從他實際完成的事情中得到。我曾經(jīng)問過他，你認(rèn)為自己最重要的發(fā)明是什么，我認(rèn)為他會回答iPad或麥金塔電腦。相反，他說這是蘋果公司。他說，打造一家持久的公司，要比制造一款偉大的產(chǎn)品要困難得多，也更重要。他是怎么做到的？從現(xiàn)在開始，商學(xué)院將會一直研究這個問題一個世紀(jì)。以下是我認(rèn)為他成功的關(guān)鍵。
1.專注( Focus )
When Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, it was producing a random array of computers and peripherals, including a dozen different versions of the Macintosh. After a few weeks of product review sessions, he’d finally had enough. “Stop!” he shouted. “This is crazy.” He grabbed a Magic Marker, padded in his bare feet to a whiteboard, and drew a two-by-two grid. “Here’s what we need,” he declared. Atop the two columns, he wrote “Consumer” and “Pro.” He labeled the two rows “Desktop” and “Portable.” Their job, he told his team members, was to focus on four great products, one for each quadrant. All other products should be canceled. There was a stunned silence. But by getting Apple to focus on making just four computers, he saved the company. “Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do,” he told me. “That’s true for companies, and it’s true for products.”
1997年，喬布斯重返蘋果公司，當(dāng)時公司生產(chǎn)的電腦和外設(shè)產(chǎn)品又雜又亂，光Mac機(jī)就有十幾款。喬布斯召開了幾個星期的產(chǎn)品評議會，最后實在受不了了，大喊道：“停！這簡直是瘋了。”他一把抓起一支記號筆，光著腳走到一塊白板前，畫了一個2乘2的網(wǎng)格?！斑@是我們需要的，”他宣稱。在這兩列上，他寫了消費者和專業(yè)版。他把這兩行標(biāo)記為桌面和便攜式。他告訴他的團(tuán)隊成員，他們的工作是專注于四種偉大的產(chǎn)品，每一種產(chǎn)品都有一個。所有其他產(chǎn)品都應(yīng)取消。一片死寂。但通過讓蘋果專注于制造四臺電腦，他拯救了這家公司。他告訴我，決定不做什么與決定做什么一樣重要，對公司是這樣，對產(chǎn)品也是這樣。
After he righted the company, Jobs began taking his “top 100” people on a retreat each year. On the last day, he would stand in front of a whiteboard (he loved whiteboards, because they gave him complete control of a situation and they engendered focus) and ask, “What are the 10 things we should be doing next?” People would fight to get their suggestions on the list. Jobs would write them down—and then cross off the ones he decreed dumb. After much jockeying, the group would come up with a list of 10. Then Jobs would slash the bottom seven and announce, “We can only do three.”
在他恢復(fù)了公司平穩(wěn)發(fā)展之后，喬布斯開始每年都要帶領(lǐng)他的百名員工休假。在最后一天，他會站在白板前（他喜歡白板，因為它們給了他完全的控制，并引起了聚焦），然后問，我們接下來要做的10件事是什么？人們會努力爭取把他們的建議寫道列表中。喬布斯會把他們寫下來，然后把他認(rèn)為的那些愚蠢的東西劃掉。經(jīng)過多次的激烈討論，團(tuán)隊將列出10條建議。然后，喬布斯會刪掉后面的7條，然后宣布，我們只能做三件事。
Focus was ingrained in Jobs’s personality and had been honed by his Zen training. He relentlessly filtered out what he considered distractions. Colleagues and family members would at times be exasperated as they tried to get him to deal with issues—a legal problem, a medical diagnosis—they considered important. But he would give a cold stare and refuse to shift his laserlike focus until he was ready.
專注是喬布斯個性的一部分，并且在他修習(xí)禪宗過程中得到了磨練。他堅決不考慮他認(rèn)為會分心的事情。有時，同事和家人試圖讓他處理一些他們認(rèn)為重要的事情，如法律問題、醫(yī)療診斷等，結(jié)果被他氣得夠嗆。他只是冷冷地看你一眼，不想放下自己專注的事情，除非等事情做完。
Near the end of his life, Jobs was visited at home by Larry Page, who was about to resume control of Google, the company he had cofounded. Even though their companies were feuding, Jobs was willing to give some advice. “The main thing I stressed was focus,” he recalled. Figure out what Google wants to be when it grows up, he told Page. “It’s now all over the map. What are the five products you want to focus on? Get rid of the rest, because they’re dragging you down. They’re turning you into Microsoft. They’re causing you to turn out products that are adequate but not great.” Page followed the advice. In January 2012 he told employees to focus on just a few priorities, such as Android and Google+, and to make them “beautiful,” the way Jobs would have done.
在他生命即將結(jié)束的時候，喬布斯在家里接受了拉里佩奇的拜訪，此時，拉里佩奇即將恢復(fù)對他共同創(chuàng)立的谷歌的控制權(quán)。盡管他們的公司長期爭斗，但喬布斯還是愿意給出一些建議?！拔覐?qiáng)調(diào)的主要事情是專注，”他回憶道。他告訴佩奇，“要弄清楚谷歌長大后想要做什么?，F(xiàn)在所有的產(chǎn)品都展現(xiàn)在眼前。你最關(guān)注的五種產(chǎn)品是什么？把剩下的都丟掉，因為他們會把你拖下去。他們把你變成微軟。他們會讓你生產(chǎn)出足夠的產(chǎn)品，但不是很好。佩奇聽從了他的建議。2012年1月，他讓員工專注于一些優(yōu)先事項，比如Android和Google+，并讓他們變得“漂亮”，就像喬布斯會做的那樣。
2.簡化( Simplify )
Jobs’s Zenlike ability to focus was accompanied by the related instinct to simplify things by zeroing in on their essence and eliminating unnecessary components. “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication,” declared Apple’s first marketing brochure. To see what that means, compare any Apple software with, say, Microsoft Word, which keeps getting uglier and more cluttered with nonintuitive navigational ribbons and intrusive features. It is a reminder of the glory of Apple’s quest for simplicity.
除了擁有禪師入定一般的專注能力，喬布斯還會本能地簡化一切事物，他會抓住事物的本質(zhì)，去除不必要的部分。在蘋果的第一本宣傳冊上寫著這樣一句話：“至繁歸于至簡?！币靼走@句話的意思，你只需要把蘋果軟件和微軟的Word軟件做一下比較。Word變得越來越丑，越來越雜，導(dǎo)航功能區(qū)缺少人性化設(shè)計，有些功能也非常擾人。從比較中，不難看出蘋果對簡單的追求是值得稱道的。
Jobs learned to admire simplicity when he was working the night shift at Atari as a college dropout. Atari’s games came with no manual and needed to be uncomplicated enough that a stoned freshman could figure them out. The only instructions for its Star Trek game were: “1. Insert quarter. 2. Avoid Klingons.” His love of simplicity in design was refined at design conferences he attended at the Aspen Institute in the late 1970s on a campus built in the Bauhaus style, which emphasized clean lines and functional design devoid of frills or distractions.
當(dāng)他在雅達(dá)利大學(xué)的夜班工作時，他學(xué)會了欣賞簡樸。雅達(dá)里的游戲沒有任何手冊，需要足夠復(fù)雜，一個被石頭砸了的新生可以把它們弄明白。它的星際迷航游戲的唯一指示是：1、插入 2、避免克林貢。他對設(shè)計簡潔的熱愛在20世紀(jì)70年代末在阿斯彭研究所參加的設(shè)計會議上得到了改進(jìn)，當(dāng)時他在包豪斯風(fēng)格的校園里，強(qiáng)調(diào)簡潔的線條和功能設(shè)計，沒有任何裝飾和干擾。
When Jobs visited Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center and saw the plans for a computer that had a graphical user interface and a mouse, he set about making the design both more intuitive (his team enabled the user to drag and drop documents and folders on a virtual desktop) and simpler. For example, the Xerox mouse had three buttons and cost 300; Jobs went to a local industrial design firm and told one of its founders, Dean Hovey, that he wanted a simple, single-button model that cost15. Hovey complied.
當(dāng)工作參觀施樂帕洛阿爾托研究中心,看到了電腦的計劃有一個圖形用戶界面和一個鼠標(biāo),他著手使設(shè)計更直觀(他的團(tuán)隊讓用戶拖拽文件和文件夾在一個虛擬桌面)和簡單。例如，施樂鼠標(biāo)有三個按鈕，花費了300美元;喬布斯去了當(dāng)?shù)氐囊患夜I(yè)設(shè)計公司，并告訴該公司的一位創(chuàng)始人迪恩霍維，他想要一個簡單的單按鈕模型，價格為15美元?；艟S履行。
Jobs aimed for the simplicity that comes from conquering, rather than merely ignoring, complexity. Achieving this depth of simplicity, he realized, would produce a machine that felt as if it deferred to users in a friendly way, rather than challenging them. “It takes a lot of hard work,” he said, “to make something simple, to truly understand the underlying challenges and come up with elegant solutions.”
喬布斯追求簡單并不是無視復(fù)雜，而是戰(zhàn)勝復(fù)雜。他知道，簡單到這種程度后，生產(chǎn)出來的機(jī)器，就會友好地聽從于用戶，而不是讓用戶覺得是一大挑戰(zhàn)。他說：“我們必須付出很大的努力，才能生產(chǎn)出簡單的東西，才能真正認(rèn)識潛在的挑戰(zhàn)，拿出絕佳的解決方案。”他們知道，簡單并不是極簡主義風(fēng)格，也不是刪繁就簡。要去掉螺絲、按鍵或多余的導(dǎo)航界面，就必須深刻了解每個元素所起的作用。
In Jony Ive, Apple’s industrial designer, Jobs met his soul mate in the quest for deep rather than superficial simplicity. They knew that simplicity is not merely a minimalist style or the removal of clutter. In order to eliminate screws, buttons, or excess navigational screens, it was necessary to understand profoundly the role each element played. “To be truly simple, you have to go really deep,” Ive explained. “For example, to have no screws on something, you can end up having a product that is so convoluted and so complex. The better way is to go deeper with the simplicity, to understand everything about it and how it’s manufactured.”
在蘋果的工業(yè)設(shè)計師喬尼艾夫，喬布斯遇到了他的靈魂伴侶，追求的是深度而不是膚淺的簡單。他們知道，簡單不僅僅是一種極簡主義風(fēng)格，也不只是一種雜亂的東西。為了消除螺絲、按鈕或多余的導(dǎo)航屏幕，有必要深刻地理解每個元素所扮演的角色。我解釋說，要做到真正的簡單，你必須走得非常深。例如，在某些東西上沒有螺絲，你最終會得到一個如此復(fù)雜和復(fù)雜的產(chǎn)品。更好的方法是更深入地了解它的簡單性，了解它的一切以及它是如何制造的。
During the design of the iPod interface, Jobs tried at every meeting to find ways to cut clutter. He insisted on being able to get to whatever he wanted in three clicks. One navigation screen, for example, asked users whether they wanted to search by song, album, or artist. “Why do we need that screen?” Jobs demanded. The designers realized they didn’t. “There would be times when we’d rack our brains on a user interface problem, and he would go, ‘Did you think of this?’” says Tony Fadell, who led the iPod team. “And then we’d all go, ‘Holy shit.’ He’d redefine the problem or approach, and our little problem would go away.” At one point Jobs made the simplest of all suggestions: Let’s get rid of the on/off button. At first the team members were taken aback, but then they realized the button was unnecessary. The device would gradually power down if it wasn’t being used and would spring to life when reengaged.
在設(shè)計iPod的界面時，每次會議喬布斯都設(shè)法去掉繁瑣的部分。他堅持要求，只需按三下，就能找到想要的功能。有一次，喬布斯提出了一個最簡單的建議：我們把開關(guān)機(jī)鍵去掉吧。一開始，團(tuán)隊成員都很吃驚，但很快意識到，這個鍵確實沒有必要。如果用戶沒有進(jìn)一步操作，設(shè)備就會逐漸進(jìn)入低能耗狀態(tài)。一旦用戶按下任意鍵，它就會自動“醒來”。
Likewise, when Jobs was shown a cluttered set of proposed navigation screens for iDVD, which allowed users to burn video onto a disk, he jumped up and drew a simple rectangle on a whiteboard. “Here’s the new application,” he said. “It’s got one window. You drag your video into the window. Then you click the button that says ‘Burn.’ That’s it. That’s what we’re going to make.”
同樣地，當(dāng)喬布斯看到一組雜亂的iDVD的導(dǎo)航屏幕時，他就跳起來，在白板上畫了一個簡單的長方形?！斑@是新的應(yīng)用程序，”他說。它有一個窗口。你把你的視頻拖到窗口。然后你點擊“燃燒”按鈕。這年代。這就是我們要做的。
In looking for industries or categories ripe for disruption, Jobs always asked who was making products more complicated than they should be. In 2001 portable music players and ways to acquire songs online fit that description, leading to the iPod and the iTunes Store. Mobile phones were next. Jobs would grab a phone at a meeting and rant (correctly) that nobody could possibly figure out how to navigate half the features, including the address book. At the end of his career he was setting his sights on the television industry, which had made it almost impossible for people to click on a simple device to watch what they wanted when they wanted.
在尋找可能被顛覆的行業(yè)或類別時，喬布斯總是問，誰制造的產(chǎn)品比應(yīng)有的更復(fù)雜。2001年，便攜式音樂播放器和在線購買歌曲的方式符合這一描述，從而導(dǎo)致了iPod和iTunes商店。手機(jī)是下一個。喬布斯會在會議上拿起電話，咆哮（正確地），沒有人能弄清楚如何瀏覽一半的功能，包括通訊錄。在他職業(yè)生涯的末期，他把目光投向了電視行業(yè)，這使得人們幾乎不可能在他們想要的時候點擊一個簡單的設(shè)備來觀看他們想要的東西。
3.全程負(fù)責(zé)( Take Responsibility End to End )
Jobs knew that the best way to achieve simplicity was to make sure that hardware, software, and peripheral devices were seamlessly integrated. An Apple ecosystem—an iPod connected to a Mac with iTunes software, for example—allowed devices to be simpler, syncing to be smoother, and glitches to be rarer. The more complex tasks, such as making new playlists, could be done on the computer, allowing the iPod to have fewer functions and buttons.
喬布斯知道，要做到簡單，最好的辦法就是確保硬件、軟件和外設(shè)無縫融合。蘋果建立的生態(tài)系統(tǒng)（如通過iTunes軟件，iPod可以和Mac機(jī)相連），可以讓設(shè)備更簡單、同步更順暢、小故障更少。較為復(fù)雜的任務(wù)，如制作新的播放列表，可以在電腦上完成，這樣iPod就可以減少功能和按鍵。
Jobs and Apple took end-to-end responsibility for the user experience—something too few companies do. From the performance of the ARM microprocessor in the iPhone to the act of buying that phone in an Apple Store, every aspect of the customer experience was tightly linked together. Both Microsoft in the 1980s and Google in the past few years have taken a more open approach that allows their operating systems and software to be used by various hardware manufacturers. That has sometimes proved the better business model. But Jobs fervently believed that it was a recipe for (to use his technical term) crappier products. “People are busy,” he said. “They have other things to do than think about how to integrate their computers and devices.”
喬布斯和蘋果對用戶體驗全程負(fù)責(zé)，而極少有企業(yè)是這樣做的。從iPhone的ARM微處理器性能，到用戶在蘋果專賣店購買iPhone，用戶體驗的每一個環(huán)節(jié)都緊密相扣。微軟在上世紀(jì)80年代，以及谷歌在過去幾年里，都采用了一種更開放的策略：不同硬件生產(chǎn)商都可以使用它們的操作系統(tǒng)和軟件。有時，這種商業(yè)模式確實更具優(yōu)勢。但喬布斯堅信，這樣出來的產(chǎn)品只會更蹩腳。他說：“人們都很忙，有其他事情要做，根本沒時間考慮怎么把電腦和其他設(shè)備連起來?！?/p>
Part of Jobs’s compulsion to take responsibility for what he called “the whole widget” stemmed from his personality, which was very controlling. But it was also driven by his passion for perfection and making elegant products. He got hives, or worse, when contemplating the use of great Apple software on another company’s uninspired hardware, and he was equally allergic to the thought that unapproved apps or content might pollute the perfection of an Apple device. It was an approach that did not always maximize short-term profits, but in a world filled with junky devices, inscrutable error messages, and annoying interfaces, it led to astonishing products marked by delightful user experiences. Being in the Apple ecosystem could be as sublime as walking in one of the Zen gardens of Kyoto that Jobs loved, and neither experience was created by worshipping at the altar of openness or by letting a thousand flowers bloom. Sometimes it’s nice to be in the hands of a control freak.
喬布斯愿意為他所稱的“整個小玩意兒”負(fù)責(zé)，部分源于他的個性：他有很強(qiáng)的控制欲。當(dāng)然，他熱衷于追求完美和制造精巧產(chǎn)品，也是原因所在。一想到卓越的蘋果軟件用在另一家公司毫無創(chuàng)新的硬件上，或者未經(jīng)驗證的應(yīng)用程序或內(nèi)容可能“玷污”完美的蘋果設(shè)備，喬布斯就會渾身不自在。這是一種不總是最大化短期利潤的方法，但在一個充斥著垃圾設(shè)備、難以理解的錯誤信息和令人討厭的界面的世界里，它帶來了令人驚嘆的產(chǎn)品，以令人愉快的用戶體驗為標(biāo)志。在蘋果的生態(tài)系統(tǒng)中，可以像在京都的禪宗花園中漫步一樣，讓人覺得自己很享受，而這兩種體驗都不是通過在開放的祭壇上敬拜，或者讓千朵花綻放的。有時候，在控制狂的手中，感覺很好。
4.落后就奮起超越( When Behind Leapfrog )
The mark of an innovative company is not only that it comes up with new ideas first. It also knows how to leapfrog when it finds itself behind. That happened when Jobs built the original iMac. He focused on making it useful for managing a user’s photos and videos, but it was left behind when dealing with music. People with PCs were downloading and swapping music and then ripping and burning their own CDs. The iMac’s slot drive couldn’t burn CDs. “I felt like a dope,” he said. “I thought we had missed it.”
創(chuàng)新型企業(yè)不僅第一個提出新理念，還知道在落后的時候如何奮起超越對手。喬布斯在開發(fā)最初的iMac時就是這樣。當(dāng)時，他關(guān)注的是管理用戶的圖片和視頻，在音樂處理方面則落后。人們用個人電腦下載和交換音樂，然后自己刻錄CD。而iMac的插槽式驅(qū)動器無法刻錄CD。喬布斯說：“我就像個傻子，我們把它漏掉了。”
But instead of merely catching up by upgrading the iMac’s CD drive, he decided to create an integrated system that would transform the music industry. The result was the combination of iTunes, the iTunes Store, and the iPod, which allowed users to buy, share, manage, store, and play music better than they could with any other devices.
不過，他并沒有給iMac裝上一個CD驅(qū)動器就完事，而是決定創(chuàng)造一個一體化系統(tǒng)，改變整個音樂行業(yè)。于是，便有了iTunes、iTunesStore和iPod這個組合，用戶利用它們可以更方便地購買、分享、管理、存儲和播放音樂，這是任何其他設(shè)備無法比擬的。
After the iPod became a huge success, Jobs spent little time relishing it. Instead he began to worry about what might endanger it. One possibility was that mobile phone makers would start adding music players to their handsets. So he cannibalized iPod sales by creating the iPhone. “If we don’t cannibalize ourselves, someone else will,” he said.
iPod大獲成功，但喬布斯并沒有沾沾自喜。他開始擔(dān)心什么會對它構(gòu)成威脅。一種可能性是，手機(jī)生產(chǎn)商在手機(jī)上安裝音樂播放器。于是，他開發(fā)出了iPhone，蠶食了iPod的銷量。他說：“如果我們不蠶食自己，也會有其他人這樣做。”
5.產(chǎn)品先于利潤( Put Product Before Profits )
When Jobs and his small team designed the original Macintosh, in the early 1980s, his injunction was to make it “insanely great.” He never spoke of profit maximization or cost trade-offs. “Don’t worry about price, just specify the computer’s abilities,” he told the original team leader. At his first retreat with the Macintosh team, he began by writing a maxim on his whiteboard: “Don’t compromise.” The machine that resulted cost too much and led to Jobs’s ouster from Apple. But the Macintosh also “put a dent in the universe,” as he said, by accelerating the home computer revolution. And in the long run he got the balance right: Focus on making the product great and the profits will follow.
當(dāng)喬布斯和他的小團(tuán)隊設(shè)計了最初的麥金塔電腦時，在20世紀(jì)80年代早期，他的禁令是讓它變得異常偉大。他從不談?wù)摾麧欁畲蠡虺杀緳?quán)衡?！安灰獡?dān)心價格，只需要指定電腦的能力，”他告訴最初的團(tuán)隊負(fù)責(zé)人。在他與麥金塔團(tuán)隊的第一次撤退時，他開始在白板上寫下一條格言：不要妥協(xié)。這臺機(jī)器的成本太高，導(dǎo)致喬布斯從蘋果公司離職。但麥金塔電腦也通過加速家庭電腦革命，對宇宙造成了影響。從長遠(yuǎn)來看，他的平衡是正確的：專注于讓產(chǎn)品變得偉大，利潤也會隨之而來。
John Sculley, who ran Apple from 1983 to 1993, was a marketing and sales executive from Pepsi. He focused more on profit maximization than on product design after Jobs left, and Apple gradually declined. “I have my own theory about why decline happens at companies,” Jobs told me: They make some great products, but then the sales and marketing people take over the company, because they are the ones who can juice up profits. “When the sales guys run the company, the product guys don’t matter so much, and a lot of them just turn off. It happened at Apple when Sculley came in, which was my fault, and it happened when Ballmer took over at Microsoft.”
1983年至1993年，約翰·斯卡利（JohnSculley）執(zhí)掌了蘋果。他曾是百事公司（PepsiCo）的高管，負(fù)責(zé)市場營銷和銷售。喬布斯離開后，他更專注于利潤最大化，而不是產(chǎn)品設(shè)計，結(jié)果，蘋果的經(jīng)營每況愈下。。我有自己的理論，關(guān)于為什么公司會出現(xiàn)衰落，喬布斯告訴我：他們生產(chǎn)一些很棒的產(chǎn)品，但隨后銷售和市場營銷人員接管了公司，因為他們是能夠提高利潤的人。當(dāng)銷售人員管理公司的時候，產(chǎn)品的人就不那么重要了，很多人都關(guān)掉了。當(dāng)斯卡利進(jìn)來的時候，蘋果就發(fā)生了，這是我的錯，當(dāng)鮑爾默接手微軟的時候。
When Jobs returned, he shifted Apple’s focus back to making innovative products: the sprightly iMac, the PowerBook, and then the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad. As he explained, “My passion has been to build an enduring company where people were motivated to make great products. Everything else was secondary. Sure, it was great to make a profit, because that was what allowed you to make great products. But the products, not the profits, were the motivation. Sculley flipped these priorities to where the goal was to make money. It’s a subtle difference, but it ends up meaning everything—the people you hire, who gets promoted, what you discuss in meetings.”
當(dāng)喬布斯回來的時候，他把蘋果的注意力轉(zhuǎn)移到制造創(chuàng)新產(chǎn)品上：sprightly iMac，PowerBook，然后是iPod，iPhone和iPad。正如他解釋的那樣，我的熱情是建立一個持久的公司，讓人們有動力去生產(chǎn)偉大的產(chǎn)品。其他一切都是次要的。當(dāng)然，賺錢很好，因為那是讓你做偉大產(chǎn)品的原因。但是產(chǎn)品，而不是利潤，才是動機(jī)。斯卡利把這些優(yōu)先事項翻轉(zhuǎn)到目標(biāo)是賺錢的地方。這是一個細(xì)微的差別，但它最終意味著你雇傭的人，得到提升的人，你在會議上討論的內(nèi)容。
6.不要盲信焦點小組( Don't Be a Slave to Focus Groups )
When Jobs took his original Macintosh team on its first retreat, one member asked whether they should do some market research to see what customers wanted. “No,” Jobs replied, “because customers don’t know what they want until we’ve shown them.” He invoked Henry Ford’s line “If I’d asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me, ‘A faster horse!’”
喬布斯和最初的Mac團(tuán)隊第一次舉行靜修會時，一位成員問是否應(yīng)該做一些市場調(diào)研，看看顧客想要什么。喬布斯回答說：“用不著，因為在我們把產(chǎn)品拿給顧客看之前，他們根本不知道自己想要什么?！彼€提到了亨利·福特的一句話：“如果我當(dāng)初問顧客想要什么，他們會說‘一匹速度更快的馬’。
Caring deeply about what customers want is much different from continually asking them what they want; it requires intuition and instinct about desires that have not yet formed. “Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page,” Jobs explained. Instead of relying on market research, he honed his version of empathy—an intimate intuition about the desires of his customers. He developed his appreciation for intuition—feelings that are based on accumulated experiential wisdom—while he was studying Buddhism in India as a college dropout. “The people in the Indian countryside don’t use their intellect like we do; they use their intuition instead,” he recalled. “Intuition is a very powerful thing—more powerful than intellect, in my opinion.”
深入關(guān)切顧客想要什么，與不斷問顧客想要什么，存在很大的不同，前者需要你發(fā)揮直覺和本能，預(yù)見顧客尚未形成的需求。喬布斯解釋說：“我們的任務(wù)就是讀出那些還沒寫在紙上的東西?！彼麤]有做市場調(diào)研，而是不斷磨練自己形成共鳴的能力，也就是從直覺上感知顧客的需求。他從大學(xué)輟學(xué)后曾到印度研究佛教，在那段時間里，他領(lǐng)悟到了直覺的力量——一種從經(jīng)驗積累中獲得的感知能力。他回憶說：“在印度農(nóng)村，人們不像我們用理智來思考問題，他們用的是直覺。直覺是一種非常強(qiáng)大的東西，我覺得，它比理智更強(qiáng)大?！?/p>
Sometimes that meant that Jobs used a one-person focus group: himself. He made products that he and his friends wanted. For example, there were many portable music players around in 2000, but Jobs felt they were all lame, and as a music fanatic he wanted a simple device that would allow him to carry a thousand songs in his pocket. “We made the iPod for ourselves,” he said, “and when you’re doing something for yourself, or your best friend or family, you’re not going to cheese out.”
有時這意味著喬布斯使用了一個人的焦點小組：他自己。他生產(chǎn)的產(chǎn)品是他和他的朋友想要的。例如，2000年有很多便攜式音樂播放器，但喬布斯覺得它們都是蹩腳的，作為一個狂熱的音樂愛好者，他想要一個簡單的設(shè)備，讓他可以在口袋里放上千首歌?！拔覀?yōu)樽约褐谱髁薸Pod，”他說，“當(dāng)你為自己、或你最好的朋友或家人做點什么時，你就不會去奶酪了?！?/p>
7.扭曲現(xiàn)實( Bend Reality )
Jobs’s (in)famous ability to push people to do the impossible was dubbed by colleagues his Reality Distortion Field, after an episode of Star Trek in which aliens create a convincing alternative reality through sheer mental force. An early example was when Jobs was on the night shift at Atari and pushed Steve Wozniak to create a game called Breakout. Woz said it would take months, but Jobs stared at him and insisted he could do it in four days. Woz knew that was impossible, but he ended up doing it.
眾所周知，喬布斯很擅于敦促別人去完成不可能完成的任務(wù)。于是，同事們根據(jù)電視劇《星際迷航》，將喬布斯的這種能力稱為“現(xiàn)實扭曲力場”（RealityDistortionField）。對那些不了解喬布斯的人來說，“現(xiàn)實扭曲力場”只是以強(qiáng)凌弱、大言欺人的委婉表達(dá)。但是，與喬布斯共過事的人都承認(rèn)，盡管這種特質(zhì)可能讓人窩火，但他們也確實因此創(chuàng)造了非凡的業(yè)績。喬布斯認(rèn)為，生活中一般的規(guī)則并不適用于他，所以，他才能夠激勵團(tuán)隊用比施樂或IBM少得多的資源，改變計算機(jī)歷史的發(fā)展進(jìn)程。
Those who did not know Jobs interpreted the Reality Distortion Field as a euphemism for bullying and lying. But those who worked with him admitted that the trait, infuriating as it might be, led them to perform extraordinary feats. Because Jobs felt that life’s ordinary rules didn’t apply to him, he could inspire his team to change the course of computer history with a small fraction of the resources that Xerox or IBM had. “It was a self-fulfilling distortion,” recalls Debi Coleman, a member of the original Mac team who won an award one year for being the employee who best stood up to Jobs. “You did the impossible because you didn’t realize it was impossible.”
那些不了解喬布斯的人將現(xiàn)實扭曲場解讀為欺凌和說謊的委婉說法。但是那些和他一起工作的人承認(rèn)，這種特質(zhì)讓他們表現(xiàn)出非凡的成就。因為喬布斯覺得生活的普通規(guī)則并不適用于他，他可以激勵他的團(tuán)隊用施樂或IBM的一小部分資源來改變計算機(jī)歷史的進(jìn)程?！斑@是一種自我實現(xiàn)的扭曲，”Debi Coleman回憶道，他是最初的Mac團(tuán)隊的一名成員，他在一年的時間里獲得了最佳工作機(jī)會獎。你做了不可能的事，因為你沒有意識到這是不可能的。
One day Jobs marched into the cubicle of Larry Kenyon, the engineer who was working on the Macintosh operating system, and complained that it was taking too long to boot up. Kenyon started to explain why reducing the boot-up time wasn’t possible, but Jobs cut him off. “If it would save a person’s life, could you find a way to shave 10 seconds off the boot time?” he asked. Kenyon allowed that he probably could. Jobs went to a whiteboard and showed that if five million people were using the Mac and it took 10 seconds extra to turn it on every day, that added up to 300 million or so hours a year—the equivalent of at least 100 lifetimes a year. After a few weeks Kenyon had the machine booting up 28 seconds faster.
一天，喬布斯走進(jìn)工程師拉里·凱尼恩（LarryKenyon）的辦公室，抱怨說他負(fù)責(zé)的Mac操作系統(tǒng)啟動時間太長了。凱尼恩開始解釋為什么無法縮短啟動時間，但喬布斯打斷了他，問道：“如果能救人一命，你能想出辦法讓啟動時間縮短10秒么？”凱尼恩說也許能。喬布斯走到一塊白板前，算了一筆賬：如果有500萬人使用Mac機(jī)，每天開機(jī)多花10秒，那么一年加起來差不多3億分鐘，這相當(dāng)于至少100個人的壽命。幾星期后，凱尼恩把開機(jī)時間縮短了28秒。
When Jobs was designing the iPhone, he decided that he wanted its face to be a tough, scratchproof glass, rather than plastic. He met with Wendell Weeks, the CEO of Corning, who told him that Corning had developed a chemical exchange process in the 1960s that led to what it dubbed “Gorilla glass.” Jobs replied that he wanted a major shipment of Gorilla glass in six months. Weeks said that Corning was not making the glass and didn’t have that capacity. “Don’t be afraid,” Jobs replied. This stunned Weeks, who was unfamiliar with Jobs’s Reality Distortion Field. He tried to explain that a false sense of confidence would not overcome engineering challenges, but Jobs had repeatedly shown that he didn’t accept that premise. He stared unblinking at Weeks. “Yes, you can do it,” he said. “Get your mind around it. You can do it.” Weeks recalls that he shook his head in astonishment and then called the managers of Corning’s facility in Harrodsburg, Kentucky, which had been making LCD displays, and told them to convert immediately to making Gorilla glass full-time. “We did it in under six months,” he says. “We put our best scientists and engineers on it, and we just made it work.” As a result, every piece of glass on an iPhone or an iPad is made in America by Corning.
當(dāng)喬布斯在設(shè)計iPhone時，他決定要把它的臉變成一個堅硬的、防刮的玻璃，而不是塑料。他會見了康寧公司的首席執(zhí)行官溫德爾幾周，他告訴他康寧公司在20世紀(jì)60年代開發(fā)了一種化學(xué)交換過程，最終導(dǎo)致了它所稱的“Gorilla玻璃”。喬布斯回答說，他想在6個月內(nèi)要一批大型的大猩猩玻璃。幾周的時間里，康寧公司并沒有制造這種玻璃，而且沒有這種能力。不要害怕，喬布斯回答說。這幾周令人震驚，不熟悉喬布斯的現(xiàn)實扭曲力場。他試圖解釋，一種虛假的自信不會克服工程上的挑戰(zhàn)，但喬布斯一再表明，他不接受這個前提。幾周后，他目不轉(zhuǎn)睛地盯著他。“是的，你可以做到，”他說。把你的注意力放在它周圍。你能做到。幾周的回憶中，他驚訝地?fù)u了搖頭，然后打電話給位于肯塔基州哈羅茲堡的康寧公司的經(jīng)理們，他們一直在做液晶顯示器，并告訴他們立即轉(zhuǎn)換成全職生產(chǎn)大猩猩玻璃?！拔覀冊诓坏?個月的時間里就完成了，”他說。我們把最好的科學(xué)家和工程師放在上面，我們只是讓它發(fā)揮作用。
因此，iPhone或iPad上的每一塊玻璃都是由康寧公司生產(chǎn)的。
8.灌輸( Impute )
Jobs’s early mentor Mike Markkula wrote him a memo in 1979 that urged three principles. The first two were “empathy” and “focus.” The third was an awkward word, “impute,” but it became one of Jobs’s key doctrines. He knew that people form an opinion about a product or a company on the basis of how it is presented and packaged. “Mike taught me that people do judge a book by its cover,” he told me.
1979年，喬布斯早期的導(dǎo)師邁克·馬爾庫拉（MikeMarkkula）給他寫了一張便條，要他恪守三條原則。前兩條是“共鳴”和“專注”，第三條有點怪，叫“灌輸”，但它已成為喬布斯最重要的信條之一。他知道，人們都是根據(jù)產(chǎn)品或公司的呈現(xiàn)和包裝方式，對它們做出評判的。他對我說：“邁克告訴我，人們是根據(jù)封面來評判一本書的?！?/p>
When he was getting ready to ship the Macintosh in 1984, he obsessed over the colors and design of the box. Similarly, he personally spent time designing and redesigning the jewellike boxes that cradle the iPod and the iPhone and listed himself on the patents for them. He and Ive believed that unpacking was a ritual like theater and heralded the glory of the product. “When you open the box of an iPhone or iPad, we want that tactile experience to set the tone for how you perceive the product,” Jobs said.
1984年，當(dāng)他準(zhǔn)備推出麥金塔電腦時，他癡迷于盒子的顏色和設(shè)計。同樣，他親自花時間設(shè)計和重新設(shè)計了iPod和iPhone的珠寶盒，并將自己列入了專利。他和我相信，拆開包裝是一種像戲劇一樣的儀式，預(yù)示著產(chǎn)品的榮耀。喬布斯說，當(dāng)你打開iPhone或iPad的盒子時，我們希望這種觸覺體驗為你對產(chǎn)品的感知定下基調(diào)。
Sometimes Jobs used the design of a machine to “impute” a signal rather than to be merely functional. For example, when he was creating the new and playful iMac, after his return to Apple, he was shown a design by Ive that had a little recessed handle nestled in the top. It was more semiotic than useful. This was a desktop computer. Not many people were really going to carry it around. But Jobs and Ive realized that a lot of people were still intimidated by computers. If it had a handle, the new machine would seem friendly, deferential, and at one’s service. The handle signaled permission to touch the iMac. The manufacturing team was opposed to the extra cost, but Jobs simply announced, “No, we’re doing this.” He didn’t even try to explain.
有時候，喬布斯利用產(chǎn)品設(shè)計來“灌輸”一種信號，而不只是作為一項功能。比如，喬布斯回歸蘋果后，開始設(shè)計新的iMac。他看到伊夫在電腦頂部設(shè)計了一個凹進(jìn)去的小提手。這種設(shè)計與其說是為了實用，還不如說是作為一種符號。iMac是臺式機(jī)，不會有很多人拎著它到處走的。但喬布斯和伊夫知道，還是有很多人對電腦打怵。如果有一個提手，電腦就顯得對用戶友好，感覺上就是給人提供服務(wù)的。有了提手，就意味著用戶可以觸碰電腦。生產(chǎn)團(tuán)隊反對增加成本，而喬布斯就一句話：“不行，就這樣做?！边B解釋都沒有。
9.力求完美( Push for Perfection )
During the development of almost every product he ever created, Jobs at a certain point “hit the pause button” and went back to the drawing board because he felt it wasn’t perfect. That happened even with the movie Toy Story. After Jeff Katzenberg and the team at Disney, which had bought the rights to the movie, pushed the Pixar team to make it edgier and darker, Jobs and the director, John Lasseter, finally stopped production and rewrote the story to make it friendlier. When he was about to launch Apple Stores, he and his store guru, Ron Johnson, suddenly decided to delay everything a few months so that the stores’ layouts could be reorganized around activities and not just product categories.
幾乎在開發(fā)每一種產(chǎn)品時，喬布斯都會在某個時刻“按下暫停鍵”，回過頭去看最初的設(shè)計，因為他覺得產(chǎn)品不夠完美。設(shè)計iPhone時，最初設(shè)計是把玻璃屏幕嵌在一個鋁制外殼內(nèi)。某個星期一早晨，喬布斯找到伊夫，說：“昨晚我睡不著，我發(fā)現(xiàn)我并不喜歡這個設(shè)計?！弊屢练蚋械骄趩实氖?，他馬上意識到喬布斯是對的。iPhone的焦點應(yīng)該是在顯示屏上，而按照當(dāng)時的設(shè)計，外殼有搶風(fēng)頭之嫌，沒有突出顯示屏。而且，整個機(jī)子太過男性化，太注重任務(wù)和效率。喬布斯對伊夫的團(tuán)隊說：“伙計們，我知道你們?yōu)檫@個設(shè)計苦干了整整九個月，但我們不得不做出改動。我們大家都得加夜班，周末也不能休息，如果你們想要的話，可以給你們幾把槍，把我們都干掉。”結(jié)果，誰也沒有叫囂，大家同意了。喬布斯回憶說：“那是我在蘋果最感驕傲的時刻之一。”
The same was true for the iPhone. The initial design had the glass screen set into an aluminum case. One Monday morning Jobs went over to see Ive. “I didn’t sleep last night,” he said, “because I realized that I just don’t love it.” Ive, to his dismay, instantly saw that Jobs was right. “I remember feeling absolutely embarrassed that he had to make the observation,” he says. The problem was that the iPhone should have been all about the display, but in its current design the case competed with the display instead of getting out of the way. The whole device felt too masculine, task-driven, efficient. “Guys, you’ve killed yourselves over this design for the last nine months, but we’re going to change it,” Jobs told Ive’s team. “We’re all going to have to work nights and weekends, and if you want, we can hand out some guns so you can kill us now.” Instead of balking, the team agreed. “It was one of my proudest moments at Apple,” Jobs recalled.
iPhone也是如此。最初的設(shè)計將玻璃屏幕設(shè)置為鋁制外殼。一個星期一的早晨，喬布斯去看了艾維?！拔易蛲頉]睡，”他說，“因為我意識到我就是不喜歡它。”令他沮喪的是，我立刻發(fā)現(xiàn)喬布斯是對的。他說，我記得他不得不做觀察，感到非常尷尬。
問題是，iPhone本應(yīng)該是關(guān)于顯示器的，但在目前的設(shè)計中，這個案例與顯示器競爭，而不是離開了。整個設(shè)備感覺太男性化、任務(wù)驅(qū)動、高效?！盎镉媯?，在過去的9個月里，你們?yōu)榱诉@個設(shè)計而犧牲了自己，但我們將會改變它，”喬布斯告訴艾維的團(tuán)隊。我們都得在晚上和周末工作，如果你愿意，我們可以分發(fā)一些槍支，這樣你就可以殺了我們。這個團(tuán)隊沒有放棄，而是同意了。喬布斯回憶說，這是我在蘋果最自豪的時刻之一。
A similar thing happened as Jobs and Ive were finishing the iPad. At one point Jobs looked at the model and felt slightly dissatisfied. It didn’t seem casual and friendly enough to scoop up and whisk away. They needed to signal that you could grab it with one hand, on impulse. They decided that the bottom edge should be slightly rounded, so that a user would feel comfortable just snatching it up rather than lifting it carefully. That meant engineering had to design the necessary connection ports and buttons in a thin, simple lip that sloped away gently underneath. Jobs delayed the product until the change could be made.
類似的事情也發(fā)生在喬布斯和艾維完成iPad的時候。有一次，喬布斯看了看模型，覺得有點不滿意。它看起來不那么隨意和友好，可以把它舀起來，然后把它帶走。
他們需要發(fā)出信號，你可以用一只手抓住它，一時沖動。他們認(rèn)為，底部的邊緣應(yīng)該是稍微圓的，這樣用戶就會覺得很舒服，只是把它拿起來，而不是小心地把它舉起來。這意味著工程必須在一個薄而簡單的嘴唇上設(shè)計必要的連接端口和按鈕，在下面輕輕地傾斜。喬布斯推遲了產(chǎn)品的生產(chǎn)，直到做出改變。
Jobs’s perfectionism extended even to the parts unseen. As a young boy, he had helped his father build a fence around their backyard, and he was told they had to use just as much care on the back of the fence as on the front. “Nobody will ever know,” Steve said. His father replied, “But you will know.” A true craftsman uses a good piece of wood even for the back of a cabinet against the wall, his father explained, and they should do the same for the back of the fence. It was the mark of an artist to have such a passion for perfection. In overseeing the Apple II and the Macintosh, Jobs applied this lesson to the circuit board inside the machine. In both instances he sent the engineers back to make the chips line up neatly so the board would look nice. This seemed particularly odd to the engineers of the Macintosh, because Jobs had decreed that the machine be tightly sealed. “Nobody is going to see the PC board,” one of them protested. Jobs reacted as his father had: “I want it to be as beautiful as possible, even if it’s inside the box. A great carpenter isn’t going to use lousy wood for the back of a cabinet, even though nobody’s going to see it.” They were true artists, he said, and should act that way. And once the board was redesigned, he had the engineers and other members of the Macintosh team sign their names so that they could be engraved inside the case. “Real artists sign their work,” he said.
喬布斯追求完美，甚至連那些看不到的部位都不馬虎。當(dāng)他還是個小男孩的時候，他幫助他的父親在他們的后院建了一道籬笆，他被告知，他們必須像在前面一樣，在籬笆的后面使用同樣多的護(hù)理。沒有人會知道，史蒂夫說。他的父親回答說，但你會知道的。他的父親解釋說，一個真正的工匠會用一塊很好的木頭，即使是在櫥柜的背面，也要用在墻上，他們也應(yīng)該在籬笆的后面做同樣的事情。這是一個藝術(shù)家的標(biāo)志，他對完美有著如此強(qiáng)烈的熱情。在監(jiān)督設(shè)計蘋果II型機(jī)和Mac機(jī)時，他要求工程師重新整理芯片布局，使線路板看起來整潔、美觀。他的這種做法尤其讓Mac機(jī)的工程師覺得不可理解。喬布斯說：“就算它是在機(jī)箱里面，我也希望它盡可能漂亮。偉大的木匠是不會在櫥柜背面用爛木料的，即便沒有人會看到?！彼f，大家都是真正的藝術(shù)家，就應(yīng)該這樣去做。線路板重新設(shè)計后，他讓工程師和Mac團(tuán)隊其他成員簽名，然后把名字刻在機(jī)箱內(nèi)部?！罢嬲乃囆g(shù)家都會在自己的作品上簽名?！彼f。
10.只容忍A級人才( Tolerate Only "A" Players )
Jobs was famously impatient, petulant, and tough with the people around him. But his treatment of people, though not laudable, emanated from his passion for perfection and his desire to work with only the best. It was his way of preventing what he called “the bozo explosion,” in which managers are so polite that mediocre people feel comfortable sticking around. “I don’t think I run roughshod over people,” he said, “but if something sucks, I tell people to their face. It’s my job to be honest.” When I pressed him on whether he could have gotten the same results while being nicer, he said perhaps so. “But it’s not who I am,” he said. “Maybe there’s a better way—a gentlemen’s club where we all wear ties and speak in this Brahmin language and velvet code words—but I don’t know that way, because I am middle-class from California.”
喬布斯對身邊的人缺乏耐心、脾氣暴躁、態(tài)度嚴(yán)厲，是出了名的。不過，他待人接物的方式雖然不值得稱道，卻也是源于他追求完美，以及只希望與最優(yōu)秀的人共事。他這樣做，是為了防止出現(xiàn)他所說的“庸人泛濫”：如果管理者太過彬彬有禮，平庸之輩就會如魚得水、碌碌無為。他說：“我并不認(rèn)為自己對人殘暴，但如果有什么事搞砸了，我會當(dāng)面講出來的。講實話，是我的職責(zé)。” 當(dāng)我追問他是否能在更好的時候得到同樣的結(jié)果時，他說也許是這樣。“但我不是我，”他說。也許有一個更好的方式，一個紳士俱樂部，我們都戴著領(lǐng)帶，用這種婆羅門語言和天鵝絨的代碼說話，但我不知道，因為我是來自加州的中產(chǎn)階級。
Was all his stormy and abusive behavior necessary? Probably not. There were other ways he could have motivated his team. “Steve’s contributions could have been made without so many stories about him terrorizing folks,” Apple’s cofounder, Wozniak, said. “I like being more patient and not having so many conflicts. I think a company can be a good family.” But then he added something that is undeniably true: “If the Macintosh project had been run my way, things probably would have been a mess.”
他的暴風(fēng)雨和虐待行為是必要的嗎？可能不會。還有其他的方法可以激勵他的團(tuán)隊。蘋果公司的聯(lián)合創(chuàng)始人沃茲尼克說，喬布斯的貢獻(xiàn)本可以在沒有那么多關(guān)于他的恐怖故事的報道中做出。我喜歡更有耐心，沒有那么多的沖突。我認(rèn)為一家公司可以是一個好家庭。但隨后他又添加了一些不可否認(rèn)的事實：如果Macintosh項目是按照我的方式運行的，那么事情可能就會一團(tuán)糟。
It’s important to appreciate that Jobs’s rudeness and roughness were accompanied by an ability to be inspirational. He infused Apple employees with an abiding passion to create groundbreaking products and a belief that they could accomplish what seemed impossible. And we have to judge him by the outcome. Jobs had a close-knit family, and so it was at Apple: His top players tended to stick around longer and be more loyal than those at other companies, including ones led by bosses who were kinder and gentler. CEOs who study Jobs and decide to emulate his roughness without understanding his ability to generate loyalty make a dangerous mistake.
喬布斯雖然粗魯、嚴(yán)厲，但很會激勵人。他讓員工充滿了激情，使他們致力于創(chuàng)造突破性的產(chǎn)品，并相信自己能夠完成看似不可能完成的任務(wù)。我們必須用結(jié)果來評判他。喬布斯的家庭關(guān)系緊密，蘋果內(nèi)部也一樣：相比其他公司，包括那些老板更為友善、更為平和的公司，喬布斯的頂尖人才往往在公司待的時間更長，也更忠誠。有些CEO研究了喬布斯后，決定像他一樣要嚴(yán)厲對待員工，卻不明白喬布斯是如何讓員工建立忠誠的，因此他們這樣做是很危險的。
“I’ve learned over the years that when you have really good people, you don’t have to baby them,” Jobs told me. “By expecting them to do great things, you can get them to do great things. Ask any member of that Mac team. They will tell you it was worth the pain.” Most of them do. “He would shout at a meeting, ‘You asshole, you never do anything right,’” Debi Coleman recalls. “Yet I consider myself the absolute luckiest person in the world to have worked with him.”
“多年來，我了解到，當(dāng)你有真正優(yōu)秀的人才時，你就不必為他們生孩子，”喬布斯告訴我。通過期待他們做偉大的事情，你可以讓他們做偉大的事情。
詢問任何一個Mac團(tuán)隊的成員。他們會告訴你，這是值得的。他們中的大多數(shù)。
“他會在一次會議上大喊大叫，你這個混蛋，你從來沒有做過正確的事，”德比科爾曼回憶道。然而，我認(rèn)為自己是世界上最幸運的人，與他共事過。
11.面對面交流( Engage Face-to-Face )
Despite being a denizen of the digital world, or maybe because he knew all too well its potential to be isolating, Jobs was a strong believer in face-to-face meetings. “There’s a temptation in our networked age to think that ideas can be developed by e-mail and iChat,” he told me. “That’s crazy. Creativity comes from spontaneous meetings, from random discussions. You run into someone, you ask what they’re doing, you say ‘Wow,’ and soon you’re cooking up all sorts of ideas.”
盡管他是數(shù)字世界的一員，或許因為太了解數(shù)字世界會讓人產(chǎn)生孤立感，所以，喬布斯認(rèn)為面對面交流非常必要。在皮克斯辦公樓的設(shè)計上，他要求能促進(jìn)意外碰面和協(xié)作。他說：“如果辦公樓不利于這一點，你就會失去很多創(chuàng)新的機(jī)會，失去突發(fā)奇想的魔力。于是，我們在設(shè)計辦公樓時，要能夠讓員工走出辦公室，到中庭來，與平時見不到的人不期而遇。”
He had the Pixar building designed to promote unplanned encounters and 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 main stairs and corridors all led to the atrium; the café and the mailboxes were there; the conference rooms had windows that looked out onto it; and the 600-seat theater and two smaller screening rooms all spilled into it. “Steve’s theory worked from day one,” Lasseter recalls. “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.”
他擁有皮克斯大樓，旨在促進(jìn)無計劃的邂逅和合作。他說，如果一棟建筑不鼓勵這種情況，你就會失去很多創(chuàng)新和由意外發(fā)現(xiàn)引發(fā)的魔力。所以我們設(shè)計了這個建筑，讓人們離開他們的辦公室，在中庭和他們可能看不到的人混在一起。前門和主樓梯和走廊都通向中庭;咖啡館和郵箱都在那里;會議室里有窗戶向外看;還有600個座位的劇院和兩個較小的放映室。拉塞特回憶說，史蒂夫的理論從第一天起就開始了。幾個月來，我一直在找那些我沒見過的人。我從來沒有見過一個能促進(jìn)合作和創(chuàng)造力的建筑。
Jobs hated formal presentations, but he loved freewheeling face-to-face meetings. He gathered his executive team every week to kick around ideas without a formal agenda, and he spent every Wednesday afternoon doing the same with his marketing and advertising team. Slide shows were banned. “I hate the way people use slide presentations instead of thinking,” Jobs recalled. “People would confront a problem by creating a presentation. I wanted them to engage, to hash things out at the table, rather than show a bunch of slides. People who know what they’re talking about don’t need PowerPoint.”
喬布斯不喜歡正正經(jīng)經(jīng)的報告，他更喜歡面對面的自由交流。每周他都會召集管理團(tuán)隊，不設(shè)正式的議程，就讓大家談?wù)劯鞣N想法。每周三下午，他也會召集營銷和廣告團(tuán)隊做這樣的事。喬布斯不允許使用幻燈片。他說：“我討厭人們用幻燈片作報告，不進(jìn)行思考。知道自己在講些什么的人，是不需要PowerPoint（ppt）的。
12.兼顧大局和小節(jié)( Know Both the Big Picture and The Details )
Jobs’s passion was applied to issues both large and minuscule. Some CEOs are great at vision; others are managers who know that God is in the details. Jobs was both. Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes says that one of Jobs’s salient traits was his ability and desire to envision overarching strategy while also focusing on the tiniest aspects of design. For example, in 2000 he came up with the grand vision that the personal computer should become a “digital hub” for managing all of a user’s music, videos, photos, and content, and thus got Apple into the personal-device business with the iPod and then the iPad. In 2010 he came up with the successor strategy—the “hub” would move to the cloud—and Apple began building a huge server farm so that all a user’s content could be uploaded and then seamlessly synced to other personal devices. But even as he was laying out these grand visions, he was fretting over the shape and color of the screws inside the iMac.
事無巨細(xì)，喬布斯都會積極投入。有些CEO善于做長遠(yuǎn)規(guī)劃，有些則明白貴在細(xì)節(jié)，而喬布斯兩者兼顧。喬布斯的一個顯著特點是，他能夠并希望設(shè)想宏偉戰(zhàn)略，同時又能關(guān)注設(shè)計的細(xì)枝末節(jié)。例如，在2000年，他提出了一個宏偉的愿景，即個人電腦應(yīng)該成為一個數(shù)字中心，用來管理所有用戶的音樂、視頻、照片和內(nèi)容，從而讓蘋果進(jìn)入個人設(shè)備業(yè)務(wù)，包括iPod和iPad。在2010年，他提出了一個后續(xù)戰(zhàn)略——中心將轉(zhuǎn)移到云端，蘋果開始建立一個龐大的服務(wù)器群，讓所有用戶的內(nèi)容都可以上傳，然后無縫地同步到其他個人設(shè)備上。但是，即使在他展示這些宏偉的愿景時，他也在為iMac內(nèi)部的螺絲的形狀和顏色而煩惱。
13.融合文理( Combine the Humanities with The Sciences )
“I always thought of myself as a humanities person as a kid, but I liked electronics,” Jobs told me on the day he decided to cooperate on a biography. “Then I read something that one of my heroes, Edwin Land of Polaroid, said about the importance of people who could stand at the intersection of humanities and sciences, and I decided that’s what I wanted to do.” It was as if he was describing the theme of his life, and the more I studied him, the more I realized that this was, indeed, the essence of his tale.
當(dāng)我還是個孩子的時候，我總是認(rèn)為自己是一個人文學(xué)科的人，但我喜歡電子學(xué)，喬布斯在他決定合作寫傳記的那天告訴我。然后我讀到我的一位英雄，寶麗來的埃德溫蘭德，談到了那些能夠站在人文和科學(xué)交叉路口的人的重要性，我決定這就是我想做的。就好像他在描述他生命的主題，我對他的研究越多，我就越意識到這確實是他故事的本質(zhì)。
He connected the humanities to the sciences, creativity to technology, arts to engineering. There were greater technologists (Wozniak, Gates), and certainly better designers and artists. But no one else in our era could better firewire together poetry and processors in a way that jolted innovation. And he did it with an intuitive feel for business strategy. At almost every product launch over the past decade, Jobs ended with a slide that showed a sign at the intersection of Liberal Arts and Technology Streets.
喬布斯貫通了文理、創(chuàng)造力和技術(shù)、藝術(shù)和工程。雖然在技術(shù)上勝過他的不乏其人（如沃茲尼亞克和蓋茨），也有比他更優(yōu)秀的設(shè)計師和藝術(shù)家，但在我們這個時代，能夠創(chuàng)造性地將詩意和處理器連接在一起的，可以說無人能出其右。而且，他對商業(yè)戰(zhàn)略還具有直覺的洞察力。在過去10年的每一次產(chǎn)品發(fā)布會上，喬布斯以一張幻燈片結(jié)束了，這張幻燈片顯示了自由藝術(shù)和科技街道的交叉路口。
The creativity that can occur when a feel for both the humanities and the sciences exists in one strong personality was what most interested me in my biographies of Franklin and Einstein, and I believe that it will be a key to building innovative economies in the 21st century. It is the essence of applied imagination, and it’s why both the humanities and the sciences are critical for any society that is to have a creative edge in the future.
在我對富蘭克林和愛因斯坦的傳記中最感興趣的是，當(dāng)一種強(qiáng)烈的個性中融匯了人文和科學(xué)，創(chuàng)造力就會迸發(fā)出來。這是21世紀(jì)打造創(chuàng)新經(jīng)濟(jì)的關(guān)鍵所在。這是應(yīng)用想象力的精髓，也是對于任何想在未來擁有創(chuàng)新優(yōu)勢的社會來說，人文和科學(xué)都至關(guān)重要的原因所在。
Even when he was dying, Jobs set his sights on disrupting more industries. He had a vision for turning textbooks into artistic creations that anyone with a Mac could fashion and craft—something that Apple announced in January 2012. He also dreamed of producing magical tools for digital photography and ways to make television simple and personal. Those, no doubt, will come as well. And even though he will not be around to see them to fruition, his rules for success helped him build a company that not only will create these and other disruptive products, but will stand at the intersection of creativity and technology as long as Jobs’s DNA persists at its core.
即使在他即將去世的時候，喬布斯也把目光投向了更多的行業(yè)。他曾設(shè)想將教科書轉(zhuǎn)變?yōu)樗囆g(shù)創(chuàng)作，任何有Mac電腦的人都能設(shè)計出蘋果在2012年1月宣布的產(chǎn)品。他還夢想著為數(shù)碼攝影制作神奇的工具，以及讓電視變得簡單和個性化的方法。毫無疑問，這些人也會來。盡管他不會看到成果,他的規(guī)則成功幫助他建立一個公司不僅將創(chuàng)建這些和其他破壞性產(chǎn)品,但將站在十字路口的創(chuàng)造力和技術(shù)只要s DNA持續(xù)的核心工作。
14.求知若渴，虛心若愚( Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish )
Steve Jobs was a product of the two great social movements that emanated from the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 1960s. The first was the counterculture of hippies and antiwar activists, which was marked by psychedelic drugs, rock music, and antiauthoritarianism. The second was the high-tech and hacker culture of Silicon Valley, filled with engineers, geeks, wireheads, phreakers, cyberpunks, hobbyists, and garage entrepreneurs. Overlying both were various paths to personal enlightenment—Zen and Hinduism, meditation and yoga, primal scream therapy and sensory deprivation, Esalen and est.
史蒂夫?喬布斯是上世紀(jì)60年代末從舊金山灣地區(qū)傳出的兩大社會運動的產(chǎn)物。
第一個是嬉皮士和反戰(zhàn)積極分子的反主流文化，他們以迷幻藥、搖滾音樂和反獨裁主義為標(biāo)志。第二個是硅谷的高科技和黑客文化，充斥著工程師、極客、線頭、燒杯、網(wǎng)絡(luò)朋克、業(yè)余愛好者和車庫企業(yè)家。這兩種方式都是通往個人啟蒙禪和印度教的各種途徑，冥想和瑜伽，原始的尖叫療法和感官剝奪，Esalen和est。
An admixture of these cultures was found in publications such as Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Catalog. On its first cover was the famous picture of Earth taken from space, and its subtitle was “access to tools.” The underlying philosophy was that technology could be our friend. Jobs—who became a hippie, a rebel, a spiritual seeker, a phone phreaker, and an electronic hobbyist all wrapped into one—was a fan. He was particularly taken by the final issue, which came out in 1971, when he was still in high school. He took it with him to college and then to the apple farm commune where he lived after dropping out. He later recalled: “On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: ‘Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.’” Jobs stayed hungry and foolish throughout his career by making sure that the business and engineering aspect of his personality was always complemented by a hippie nonconformist side from his days as an artistic, acid-dropping, enlightenment-seeking rebel. In every aspect of his life—the women he dated, the way he dealt with his cancer diagnosis, the way he ran his business—his behavior reflected the contradictions, confluence, and eventual synthesis of all these varying strands.
在斯圖爾特布蘭德的整個地球目錄等出版物中發(fā)現(xiàn)了這些文化的混合。它的第一個封面是從太空拍攝的著名的地球照片，它的副標(biāo)題是對工具的訪問。其基本理念是，技術(shù)可以成為我們的朋友。那些成為嬉皮士、叛逆、精神追求者、電話打者和電子愛好者的工作，都是一個粉絲。他尤其受到了最后一個問題的影響，這個問題是1971年，當(dāng)時他還在上高中的時候。他帶著它去了大學(xué)，然后又去了蘋果農(nóng)場公社，在那里他輟學(xué)了。他后來回憶道：“在他們最后一期的封底上，有一張清晨鄉(xiāng)間小路的照片，如果你喜歡冒險的話，你可能會發(fā)現(xiàn)自己搭便車到了?！毕旅娴奈淖质牵呵笾艨?，虛心若愚。在他的整個職業(yè)生涯中，喬布斯一直踐行著這句話：在他的個性中，除了商業(yè)和工程成分，還要有嬉皮士反對循規(guī)蹈矩的那一面——這是他在追求藝術(shù)、吸食毒品、追求心靈啟迪的叛逆時期形成的。在他人生的每個方面，包括他約會過的女人、對待癌癥診斷的方式、運營企業(yè)的方式等，他的行為都反映出了這樣一種變化：從沖突、合流，到最終所有這些不同方面的融合。
Even as Apple became corporate, Jobs asserted his rebel and counterculture streak in its ads, as if to proclaim that he was still a hacker and a hippie at heart. The famous “1984” ad showed a renegade woman outrunning the thought police to sling a sledgehammer at the screen of an Orwellian Big Brother. And when he returned to Apple, Jobs helped write the text for the “Think Different” ads: “Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes…” If there was any doubt that, consciously or not, he was describing himself, he dispelled it with the last lines: “While some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”
即使在成立蘋果公司后，喬布斯也在公司廣告中流露出自己叛逆和反文化的個性，就像是在宣告他內(nèi)心仍是一個黑客、一個嬉皮士。重返蘋果后，喬布斯幫助撰寫了“非同凡想”（ThinkDifferent）廣告的文案：“向那些瘋狂的家伙們致敬，他們特立獨行，他們桀驁不馴，他們?nèi)鞘巧?，他們格格不入……”說到這里，如果還有人不相信他是在講他自己，那么文案中最后幾句話或許可以消除這種疑慮：“或許他們是別人眼里的瘋子，但他們卻是我們眼中的天才。因為只有那些瘋狂到以為自己能夠改變世界的人，才能真正改變世界。”
