Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple's Success

Simplicity can make itself known in many forms: products, strategies, corporate hierarchies, processes, ads, speeches, and a hundred other places. But nowhere is Simplicity found in such a concentrated form as the name of a new product.

The quality of work resulting from a project increases in direct proportion to the degree of involvement by the ultimate decision maker.

Apple lets Chiat shoot for the stars. If it produces a clunker along the way, the world isn’t going to end. People aren’t going to abandon their Apple equipment on the streets.

Simplicity not only enables Apple to revolutionize—it enables Apple to revolutionize repeatedly.

Simplicity doesn’t spontaneously spring to life with the right combination of molecules, water, and sunlight. It needs a champion—someone who’s willing to stand up for its principles and strong enough to resist the overtures of Simplicity’s evil twin, Complexity. It needs someone who’s willing to guide a process with both head and heart.

He never lost sight of the fact that at the end of the day, technology is about people: what stirs their imaginations, what keeps them satisfied, and what makes them smile.

This is part of the challenge that we non-Steves must face. Most of us aren’t comfortable with the idea of turning into coldhearted control freaks, but we also know that we sometimes need to be tough to keep projects on track.

Steve Jobs was one of the most forward-thinking people on this planet, yet he was refreshingly old-fashioned when it came to the use of analytics. He demanded all the information he could get, and he would digest every bit of it—but he took it all in context.

Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world . . . are the ones who do.