Nice academic article on S. Jobs and Apple

[anonymouse1]

http://knowledge.insead.edu/INSEAD-Knowl...110907.cfm

Money quote:


Steve Jobs was a master at the five skills of disruptive innovators. He personally excelled at connecting the unconnected, or associational thinking. He was constantly on the hunt for new insights by observing the world through the eyes of an anthropologist. He regularly networked for new ideas with people who were 180 degrees different than himself. And he constantly experimented with different prototypes of every product and service Apple ever produced. At the very core, Jobs was exceptional at asking provocative questions, ones that challenged the status quo, inside Apple and out. Put simply, Jobs thinks different because he acts different — habitually.

Even more important, when Jobs returned to Apple in 1996 (after being kicked out in 1985 by less than creative senior executives), he not only leveraged again his disruptive skills as the new CEO, but he created a top team of people with strong innovation and execution skills. Some were quite like him, innovators like Jonathan Ive, and others not quite as much like him, executors like Tim Cook. Jobs also created a culture of innovation (though he likely called it a culture of excellence) with processes and philosophies that reinforced the power of not only getting great ideas but transforming them into world changing products.

[cbelt3]

There have been some excellent studies on the strength of small teams in innovation and creativity. Another aspect to the brilliance is the use of small teams in these developments.

My own experience in the defense industry showed the truth in these basic facts... when your development team gets more than a 'critical mass' of people, it stops developing and starts arguing. And the personalities define the size of that critical mass. I can recall two brilliant PhD's who were completely incapable of working on the same project. We referred to them as "A critical mass of Two".

Such studies should be required reading for any student... engineering, sciences, business, art...

At the end, work involves one common element. We all work WITH and FOR other people. Understanding the dynamics of groups and of people gives you a significant advantage in the world.

(I did a whole session on that when I was teaching Project Management.)

[SDGuy]

cbelt3 wrote:
...My own experience in the defense industry showed the truth in these basic facts... when your development team gets more than a 'critical mass' of people, it stops developing and starts arguing...

:agree:

For those not in the know, there is a HUGE DoD Command and Control Program, called "GCCS". Designed in the '90s, it was getting very long in the tooth by the early 2000s. The follow-on/replacement was a gigantic Program called NECC - complete with bloated budget.

A few years ago, I was working with the original GCCS designers who came up with their own GCCS replacement on a shoestring budget. Long story short - the NECC folks tried to kill the new baby while it was in the crib, but thankfully fell victim to budget cutters. The official GCCS replacement (now renamed to be a GCCS upgrade, NOT a new program - probably to avoid the politics of funding a new program) is software that was essentially written by a 2-man team, and is far better than the "solution" that the DoD spent 10s of millions of dollars on, and into the triple digits of people trying to make it work.

I've never seen large teams come up with good product, but small teams (with the right people) always seem to do well...