LSW#31 ☎️iPhone was Once a Dumb Idea
Career lessons from the genesis of the best selling product in history
When working with clients, a recurring pattern I’ve noticed: dismissing/discounting the potential of our own ideas and viewpoints. In contrast, we can be more forgiving and accepting of others’ ideas. This is especially true if you are the conscientious, thinking type, and actually know what you are doing.
It’s the curse of expertise. The more you know, the more you also know how something won’t work. In the competition between the messiness of our own thinking and the polished exteriors of others’ opinions, our ideas lose out.
The iPhone today is the best-selling product ever on earth. It has generated billions of dollars in revenue and turned Apple into a trillion dollar behemoth. You would think that as an idea, or vision, it should be a slam-dunk. It wasn’t.
Consider the following two stories from the early days of the iPhone.
A dumb idea
Here’s your “inspirational quote” for the day:
Why the fuck would we want to do that?
That is the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard.
That was Steve Jobs’ exact response when he was first pitched the idea of turning the iPod into a phone in 2004. It took Apple’s teams another 6 months before Jobs gave the green light for the iPhone. [1] [2]
To even think that Jobs called this idea dumb makes you question our notions about what we know. Bear in mind, Jobs was no ordinary person off the street. By 2004 he already had many iconic products on his 30-year resume, and yet he couldn’t see the potential.
What makes us think we can? Perhaps sobering, but probably more liberating.
Telling Steve Jobs to shut up
Corning’s gorilla glass is now standard on all smartphones. But at one point it was an unknown, 50-year-old technology languishing in a research corner. The original plan was to use plastic on iPhone screens, but this was causing smudging issues. The natural solution was glass. The challenge was to find one that was strong enough.
Jobs himself was actively searching for a solution. Walter Isaacson describes it this way [3] :
The natural place to look was Asia, where the glass for the stores was being made. But Jobs’s friend John Seeley Brown, who was on the board of Corning Glass in Upstate New York, told him that he should talk to that company’s young and dynamic CEO, Wendell Weeks. So he dialed the main Corning switchboard number and asked to be put through to Weeks. He got an assistant, who offered to pass along the message. “No, I’m Steve Jobs,” he replied. “Put me through.” The assistant refused.
Jobs called Brown and complained that he had been subjected to “typical East Coast bullshit.” When Weeks heard that, he called the main Apple switchboard and asked to speak to Jobs. He was told to put his request in writing and send it in by fax. When Jobs was told what happened, he took a liking to Weeks and invited him to Cupertino.
Jobs described the type of glass Apple wanted for the iPhone, and Weeks told him that Corning had developed a chemical exchange process in the 1960s that led to what they dubbed “gorilla glass.” It was incredibly strong, but it had never found a market, so Corning quit making it. Jobs said he doubted it was good enough, and he started explaining to Weeks how glass was made. This amused Weeks, who of course knew more than Jobs about that topic. “Can you shut up,” Weeks interjected, “and let me teach you some science?”
Jobs was taken aback and fell silent. Weeks went to the whiteboard and gave a tutorial on the chemistry, which involved an ion-exchange process that produced a compression layer on the surface of the glass. This turned Jobs around, and he said he wanted as much gorilla glass as Corning could make within six months. “We don’t have the capacity,” Weeks replied. “None of our plants make the glass now.”
“Don’t be afraid,” Jobs replied. This stunned Weeks, who was good-humored and confident but not used to Jobs’s reality distortion field. He tried to explain that a false sense of confidence would not overcome engineering challenges, but that was a premise that Jobs had repeatedly shown he didn’t accept. He stared at Weeks unblinking. “Yes, you can do it,” he said. “Get your mind around it. You can do it.”
As Weeks retold this story, he shook his head in astonishment. “We did it in under six months,” he said. “We produced a glass that had never been made.” Corning’s facility in Harrisburg, Kentucky, which had been making LCD displays, was converted almost overnight to make gorilla glass full-time. “We put our best scientists and engineers on it, and we just made it work.” In his airy office, Weeks has just one framed memento on display. It’s a message Jobs sent the day the iPhone came out: “We couldn’t have done it without you.”
A couple of things stood out for me:
The conversation between Weeks and Jobs almost did not happen. What if either of them decided this was too much trouble?
What’s now common was once an impossibility. Cliched perhaps, but an important reminder nevertheless.
Takeaways for your career
1. The curse of being “results oriented”
Often, before taking action, we try to predict whether something will work or not. This performative notion pervades our thinking, perfectly captured by the term “results oriented professional”. But when operating in unknown, uncharted territory, we don’t really know. Questioning and stopping ourselves before even taking the first step is simply counter-productive that stymies effective action.
2. Perfect outcomes hide the messy process
Don’t use the presence of messiness, or the absence of clarity, as a decision-making criteria. Even the greatest product, leading up to it, was a messy process backstage. If you look back at your own life, what now looks like a neat linear progression, was not a given. You had to hustle for it. We tend to forget this, especially as we age. Our thinking tends to get more calcified, and less flexible over time.
3. Think of your “pitch” as waves shaping the shoreline, not a one-time tsunami
We are often told to perfect an elevator pitch. If somehow we got the words right, in front of the right person…and so the thinking goes. What’s more practical is to account for quantity, frequency, and variation of your message.
Before ideas get traction, somebody has to drum them up for weeks and months, even years. Research indicates that people have to see and hear you 7-10 times before they even start to pay attention.
At the same time, ideas are cheap. It’s execution and stick-to-itiveness that often tilts their prospects. Our commonly accepted notions of innovation and breakthroughs are typically misleading.
4. Everyone’s winging it
The future is a level-playing field. Everyone has the same constraint — the future is unknown. Some are better at pretending than others. You don’t know what the future entails. Don’t assume others your managers know it either.
VPs and CEOs are all figuring it out, just like the rest of us. You staying silent doesn’t help the status quo. Learn the art of challenging entrenched ideas, and asserting your point of view. The good ones will appreciate it, and make you more visible. As Oliver Burkeman put it, “everyone’s winging it”.
5. Get in the trenches
Despite being CEOs of billion-dollar corporations, Jobs and Weeks were personally making the calls, instead of “delegating”. Both were either initially rejected, or were put through the hoops.
A prime source of inauthenticity in leadership is when managers are too disengaged from the day-to-day realities of what their teams are facing. And the antidote is doing what Tom Peters calls MBWA- managing by wandering around.
That does it for this week’s edition. What stood out for you from these stories? Hit reply and let me know.
Sources
The One Device by Brian Merchant
Think Again by Adam Grant
Steve Jobs by Walter Issacson