Sales + Customers = Nothing Broken is the formula for corporate cyanide. Most big companies that die kill themselves drinking it. Complacency is an enemy. “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it,” is an impossible idiom. No matter what the sales, no matter what the customer satisfaction, there is always something to fix. Asking, “Why doesn’t it work?” is creation’s inhalation. Answering is breathing out. Innovation becomes suffocation without it.
“Why doesn’t it work?” has the pull of a pole star. It sets creation’s direction. For Jobs and the iPhone the critical point of departure was not finding a solution but seeing a problem: the problem of permanent keyboards making smarter phones harder to use. Everything else followed.
Apple was not unique. Korean electronics giant LG launched a product much like the iPhone before the iPhone was announced. The LG Pradahad a full-size touch screen, won design awards, and sold a million units. When Apple’s very similar direction — a big touch screen — was revealed, competitors built near replicas within months. These other companies could make an iPhone but they could not conceive one. They could not look at their existing products and ask, “Why doesn’t it work?”
The secret of Steve was evident in 1983, during the sunrise of the personal computer, when he spoke at a design conference in Aspen, Colorado. There was no stage and there were no visual aids. Jobs stood behind a lectern with yearbook hair, a thin white shirt, its sleeves folded as far as his forearms and — “they paid me sixty dollars so I wore a tie” — a pink and green bow tie. The audience was small. He gestured wildly as he spoke, frothing with a penetrating vision of computers including “portable computers with radio links," “electronic mailboxes,” and “electronic maps.” Apple Computer, of which Jobs was then co-founder and a director, was a six-year-old startup playing David to IBM’s Goliath. Apple’s sling was sales. The company had sold more personal computers than any other in 1981 and 1982. It expected its market to grow to ten million computers by 1986. But despite the altitude of his optimism, Jobs was dissatisfied:
“If you look at computers, they look like garbage. All the great product designers are off designing automobiles or buildings but hardly any of them are designing computers. We’re going to sell ten million computers in 1986. Whether they look like a piece a shit or they look great. There are going to be these new objects in everyone’s working environment, in everyone’s educational environment, in everyone’s home environment. And we have a shot at putting a great object there. Or if we don’t, we’re going to put one more piece of junk there. By 1986 or 1987 people are going to be spending more time interacting with these machines than they spend in a car. And so industrial design, software design and how people interact with these things must be given the consideration that we give automobiles today if not a lot more.”
Twenty-eight years later, Walt Mossberg, technology columnist for theWall Street Journal, described the same discussion as it happened near the end of Jobs’s life:
“One minute he’d be talking about sweeping ideas for the digital revolution. The next about why Apple’s current products were awful, and how a color, or angle, or curve, or icon was embarrassing.”
A good salesman sells everybody. A great salesman sells everybody but himself. What made Steve Jobs think different was not genius, passion, or vision. It was his refusal to believe sales and customers meant nothing was broken. He enshrined this in the name of Apple’s campus: Infinite Loop. The secret of Steve was that he was never satisfied. He devoted his life to asking, “Why doesn’t it work?” and, “What should I change to make it work?”
销售量+客户=没有问题，这是大多数公司的准则。大多数很大的公司都死于这项准则。自满是最大的敌人。“如果问题没出现，就不要去解决。”这是一个荒谬的说法。无论销售多么好，无论顾客多么满意，总有一些事情可以做的更好。提出问题和思考答案对于创新来说就像呼吸一样，只要重复这个过程，创新就不至于窒息。
“why doesn't it work?”引导创造的方向。对于乔布斯和苹果而言，刚开始最重要的不是找到一个解决方案，而是寻找一个问题：固定的键盘问题导致只能手机很难使用。其他的一切事情皆是如此。
当年的苹果并不是唯一制造这种手机的厂商。韩国的电子巨头LG在苹果发布之前正式推出了一款类似苹果的大屏手机。这款LG有着足够大的屏幕，并赢得了设计大奖，卖出了一百万部。当苹果的设计被透漏出来后，很多手机厂商在几个月内就制造出了类似苹果的手机，苹果一直在被模仿着，但是从未被超越。因为他们不了解他们现有的产品，而且从来不会问“why doesn't it work?”
1983年，还是个人电脑兴起的时候，在Aspen, Colorado的一个设计大会上，乔布斯已经向人们介绍了他的想法。当时没有舞台，没有演讲用的道具。乔布斯留着长长的头发，穿着瘦小的白衬衫，袖子腕到了胳膊上，带着一个粉绿相间的领结，站在讲台上手舞足蹈的为大家介绍他极具远见的想法：“无线电的手提电脑”“电子邮箱”和“电子地图”。当时的苹果就像打工的大卫一样和IBM这样的巨人争夺者市场。苹果的销售直线上升，公司当时的销售额是81年和82年的销售总额。他们预期86年将会卖出一千万台电脑。尽管他们相当的乐观，但是乔布斯还是不满足：
“你现在看到的电脑就像垃圾一样。大多数优秀的设计师都在汽车和建筑行业，没有几个在设计电脑。我们将会在86年卖出一千万台电脑。不管他看起来一文不值还是看起来非常棒。新的目标就是让电脑普及到日常工作，学习环境，家庭环境。我们将尝试着实现这一新目标。如果我们没有成功，我们将会生产更多的垃圾。到86年或者87年，人们在机器上花费的时间将多过于在汽车上的时间。因此工业设计、软件设计和计算机将会得到大量的关注，至少不会比如今放在汽车工业的少。”
28年后，华尔街日报的技术专栏作家 Walt Mossberg，描述了关于乔布斯去世前不久的一段讨论时说：
“上一分钟他还在讨论着数字化革命的想法，下分钟就开始批评苹果产品的缺陷了，从颜色到曲线再到图标。”
一个好的推销员可以推销给任何人。一个优秀的推销员可以推销东西给任何人，但是他自己却不会买。并不是天赋，激情和想象力让斯蒂夫乔布斯有着不同的想法。他拒绝相信好的销售加上客户可以让一些事情无懈可击这一法则。乔布斯成功的法则就是他从来不满足现状，他究其一生都在问“Why doesn’t it work?”“What should I change to make it work?”