Greatness

Taste requires originality. It invokes an aspirational authenticity. Writer George Saunders calls this “achieving the iconic space,” and it’s what he’s after when he meets his creative writing students. “They arrive already wonderful. What we try to do over the next three years is help them achieve what I call their “iconic space” — the place from... See more

Did Steve jobs ever say, "Hey, I want to make a $100 million company?" That was never in discussion. He said, "I want to make insanely great products. Then I want to get really good at marketing because I want everybody in the world to have an Apple device, and the way to do that is to get really good at marketing."

A lot of companies talk about quality, but if you want your brand to be timeless, you have to be a fanatic about it. Before we launch a Louis Vuitton suitcase, for example, we put it in a torture machine, where it is opened and closed five times per minute for three weeks. And that is not all—it is thrown, and shaken, and crushed. You would laugh

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