How to acquire the magical Innovation power of Steve Jobs is an urge among many of us. Yes, he was passionate about building tools to help people unleash their potential. Surprisingly, like Thomas Alva Edison and many others, he did not keep experimenting with a series of tools. Besides, was his passion for incrementally perfecting the intersection of technology and liberal arts good enough to make our hearts sing? In quest of getting an answer, we find reinvention at the core of Steve Jobs’ innovation secret. A unified theory of reinvention offers us a frame of reference in explaining how innovators “associate” ideas from different fields and apply them to the product or service they’re working on. Despite the magical performance, perhaps, Steve Jobs was one of the great innovators doing the same.
We are all aware of Steve Jobs’ magical innovation power in giving birth to Apple and rescuing it from getting lost in bankruptcy or being sold out. Often, we relate this success to his attributes and notable remarks he made. Some of them are (i) passion, (ii) creating your legacy, (iii) making an impact, (iv) connecting the dots, (v) saying “No”, (vi) creating “insanely great” experiences, and (vii) having a meaningful journey, (viii) becoming a great storyteller, (ix) selling dreams, (x) thinking different, and many more. But is there a common thread around which all of them could be connected into an integrated whole? Perhaps, yes. That is pursuing a reinvention journey, creating new, more powerful waves through recreating existing inventions by changing the technology core. From Apple 1 to iPad, Steve Jobs was on the journey of reinvention through the perfection of recreated waves out of borrowed ideas.
Playing with Hobby Gave Birth to Apple 1:
In the 1970s, hobbyists used to play in making personal computers. They used to buy components or kits and assemble components as per given circuit layout to make computers. The journey of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in making Apple 1 was no different. It was a populated circuit board within a wooden box with a keyboard and display terminal (television) interface. Perhaps, a bold, specific vision like “put a computer in the hands of everyday people” did not inspire them to set everything in motion in making Apple 1. To keep working on the hobby, Steve sold his car, and Wozniak sold his HP-65 calculator for $500. Their creation was unveiled by Wozniak in July 1976 at the Homebrew Computer Club in Palo Alto, California.
Subsequently, the Apple I was rolled out in July 1976 at a price of US$666.66. Instead of creating a big bang, within nine or ten months, they succeeded in selling only 25 units. Certainly, this number did not indicate that Steve Jobs was on the mission of putting a computer in the hands of every people.
Very soon, Apple released an upgraded version as Apple II, in June 1977. As opposed to the makeshift arrangement of Apple I, Apple II had a look of a purpose-built computer at a price tag of US$1,298. Certainly, it did better than Apple I, reaching the sale of 4.8 million units.
Steve’s Magic in Macintosh—Reinvention of User Interface out of Borrowed Ideas:
In designing and unveiling Apple I, Apple II, and Apple II plus, ideas mostly came from the engineering background of Steve Wozniak. But upon seeing the point-and-click graphical user interface (GUI) of Xerox Alto, Steve Jobs envisioned a whole new frontier for personal computers. Certainly, it was Steve’s success in connecting dots. He took no time to associate ideas behind the GUI of Xerox Alto and take steps to apply them to Apple II. His background in calligraphy and passion for easing the complexity of the user interface of their creation connected nicely with typeface, fonts, mouse, and point and click. Hence, he embarked on reinventing the Apple II by changing the text-based user interface with the GUI technology developed and given away by Xerox. Subsequently, Macintosh debuted with a big bang.
Steve’s magical power was in connecting dots and taking steps to refine and adapt them in reinventing the personal computer. Yes, the ease of use of this reinvention was strong enough in support of the vision of making computers usable by everybody. The intuitive graphical user interface substantially reduced the demand for computer-specific knowledge and skills for computer users. Intuitive, Innate abilities are good enough. Hence, unlike in the past, anybody became eligible to be a computer user.
Reinvention of Walkman Gave Birth to iPod:
After 12 years of his departure, in 1997, Steve Jobs got into the mission of rescuing Apple. Yes, Steve was right in his statement, “The cure for Apple is not cost-cutting; the cure for Apple is to innovate its way out of its current predicament.” But how did he get the idea for innovation for rescuing Apple? Like in the past, he succeeded by borrowing, refining, and connecting ideas for reinventing existing products. He got ideas from Walkman, MP3 players, iTunes, Radio designed in 1958, wheel-based user interface, and many more.
Like in the past, Steve’s strength was to connect those dots and envision a whole new experience for the users. In this mission, his ability to detect the anomaly and say “no to 1,000 things” was highly critical. Subequal, Steve Jobs succeeded in reinventing Walkman and MP3 player as an elegant product—iPod, released on October 23, 2001. The success of this product was strong enough for Apple to come out from the impending threat of filing bankruptcy. Furthermore, it reveals that Steve Jobs’ innovation secret is in reinvention.
iPhone Emerged as Reinvention of Smartphone and iPod:
While iPod was flying high, Steve Jobs predicted a bleak future—the growing threat of the invasion of the smartphone. Once again, he embarked on the mission of reinvention. He looked around for ideas for addressing pain points experienced by the users of smartphones. His passion, empathy, and ability to connect dots led to saying No to the ongoing innovation race of smartphones by adding physical features, buttons, and keys. Instead, he picked by half-baked multitouch technology for making the user interface simpler, cleaner, and user-friendly. Most importantly, the removal of the physical keyboard led to expanding the screen size.
Like in the past, he also picked up key technologies and ideas from the outside. His strength was in recreating existing products by refining and integrating borrowed ideas into a remarkable reinvention. Subsequently, reinvented smartphone emerged as iPhone in 2007. Furthermore, the relentless journey of refinement has been evolving it into a magical success.
iPad—reinvention of wax tablet:
How did Steve Jobs get the idea of iPad? Did he invent or reinvent? Like in the past, his concentration at the intersection of technology and liberal arts made our hearts sing again due to another reinvention success—giving birth to the iPad. In retrospect, the iPad has roots in the wax tablet. This tablet is made of wood and covered with a layer of wax. With the help of a stylus, a pointed instrument, people used to write on the wax surface. In the mid-8th century BCE, perhaps, the Greeks started using the folding pair of wax tablets. There are also pieces of evidence of the use of wax tablets as early as the 14th-century BCE.
Before the debut of the iPad on April 3, 2010, for sure, the wax tablet had gone through many cycles of reinvention. However, the reinvention of it by Steve Jobs has led to its sale of as high as 500 million units (by the end of 2021). It has been a remarkable innovation diffusion success story, revealing that Steve Jobs’ innovation secret is in reinvention.
Steve’s focus had been on reinventing and fine-tuning products. The purpose is of helping customers in performing jobs better. For sure, it is a strong thesis in favor of enriching lives with products. For sure, nobody cares about products. All they care about is Getting jobs done better to take care of themselves. Hence, his focus on creating tools and experiences—through reinvention–to enrich customers and add value to their life has been paying off. Thus, the reinvention of products and their continued refinement, culminating in the release of successive better versions, has been diffusing them deeper in society as progressive waves. In the end, Steve Jobs’ innovation secret has been due to reinvention from the refinement of borrowed ideas. Hence, repeating Steve Jobs’s success of creative destruction appears to be plausible.
