Steve Jobs on Innovation
Friday, October 7, 2011 at 9:45AM I'm currently taking a course on Management of Innovation with Professor Andrew Hargadon. The class is extraordinarily interesting. We have been looking at what surrounded some of the most impactful innovations of all time including the light bulb (Edison), the Ford Model T (Henry Ford), Microsoft Windows (Bill Gates) and others.
In each of these instances, we think of a single genius leading the rest of us to the miraculous discovery. However, this could not be further from the truth. Each of these innovators pulled existing technologies that were already being used in other industries and drew on the experience of experts who knew how to manage these technologies. These individual's impact came from combining the technologies in new and exciting ways and their success was achieved by having great partners. This is not to diminish the achievements of these men but only to say that we as a society don't look at innovation in a realistic context.
Steve Jobs said it well.
As we look forward to the future of Apple and other tech companies, we need to think about who is going to have the best combination or iteration of a technology. Not necessarily who is going to have the most unique or new technology.