Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple's Success

So, can Simplicity help you build the next Apple? Not unless you have a few thousand of the industry’s best people on call. Can Simplicity help you achieve spectacular results for your business? Absolutely. That’s because Simplicity is not the goal—it’s the guiding light that can help a business achieve its goals.

The more formal the presentation, the more suspicious Steve seemed to get.

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.

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.

Being competitive without being arrogant is a difficult thing.

Simplicity is the love child of two of the most powerful forces in business: Brains and Common Sense.

As those who have worked with Apple will attest, the simpler way isn’t always the easiest. Often it requires more time, more money, and more energy. It might require you to step on a few toes. But more times than not, it will lead to measurably better results.

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

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.

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