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

brilliant engineers, designers, manufacturers, and marketers performing miracles through a rare combination of technology skills, artistic sensibility, and sheer bravado.

Leonard Bernstein captured this thought perfectly when he said: To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time.

The Apple brand stood for quality, design, and Simplicity, and the Apple Stores brought all three of these things to life.

The cost of the big briefings and subsequent focus groups, including airfare and hotels, must have been huge. During all my years working with Apple as both an agency creative director and a consultant, I never attended a formal meeting like this. In fact, I never even attended an overcrowded meeting. There’s something in the blood at Dell that

Simplicity is an open book. The concept has to be quick. The customer has to get it in a second—like “phone, Internet, and iPod, all in one.” Customers need to be able to pick it up and start using it instantly. Most important, it has to improve our lives by an order of magnitude over what’s already available or create an entirely new category by

I had planned to first recap the strategy, so Steve could appreciate how each ad took a slightly different approach to fulfilling it. I was proud of the work and anxious to share. I only got about three sentences into my preamble when Steve jumped on me. In the blink of an eye, he went from focused to irritated. “Just show me the ads!” he said.

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.