So when I unexpectedly found myself running this high-growth successful software company, the thought of making it be the kind of place that I would want to work at and different from all those other places was incredibly appealing.

What we believed in very strongly was that the rules of quality for what was produced were not set by the computer industry, but by the publishing industry. It didn't matter whether or not some guy at IBM thought it looked good. What mattered was someone at Random House or Time-Life or Ogilvy & Mather or someone like that appreciated it.

Today hundreds, sometimes thousands, of people might develop a piece of software. This has led to two things, Saarinen says: a focus on process over product, and removing engineers from positions of influence. “I think people get too focused on the different frameworks and processes,” he says, “and you start to forget, what are you actually doing?

wanted to make new things—things that might seem strange—and not things you make because you know they will sell. The ultimate challenge, I suppose, was to design, make, and sell inventive and wholly new products. To do this, you need to be more than a designer or engineer. You need control over the whole process just as my exemplars Soichiro Honda