Why are Macs better than PCs?
Why is Amazon better than barnesandnoble.com and Walmart?
Why is Pixar better than Disney or DreamWorks?
Why is Google Maps better than everything else?
Why is Whole Foods better than Grocery Store X?
Why is iTunes better than Napster?
Why are HBO’s original series’ better than Showtime’s?
I think it boils down to a few things. The better companies
Have a Passion for making great products.
Have an Idea for a great product.
Have the Taste to discriminate between a good or bad product.
Know how to Develop the product.
Know how to Sell the product.
There are manifold tomes on how to 4. Develop and 5. Sell products. These areas are actively studied. I don’t know if many people are thinking about how to have an 2. Idea for a great product. Purple Cow and Free Prize Inside are the only books I am aware of that try to tell you how to have a good product idea.
But who is thinking about how to have 1. Passion and 3. Taste? Can either of these qualities be taught? Probably not. Is there anything intelligent to say about them anyway?
Continued in Part II.
The best book ever written for producing great ideas is A Technique for Producing Ideas by James Young. I’ve read stacks off books that are full of with weighty theoretical ideas and backed by lots of research and case studies but for me nothing has worked better in practice than this book. The book is very tactical and essentially provides great advice on documenting and analyzing ideas. This can certainly help in forming a better starting idea but that only gets you to the starting line.
What makes good ideas so hard to create is the fact that they are inherently risky. You have to commit to something.
The best ideas that I’ve been associated with are usually very simple. But something simple is much harder and riskier than something complex. Committing to a simple design will always make some stakeholders upset and/or nervous.
As someone who has been a product manager in the software business for 15 years I’ve found that only the most courageous product teams can commit to a simple design. A simple design means making harsh and risky decisions very early in the product process. Committing to a feature rich, complex design is always the safest course because it gives something to all the potential stakeholders and distributes the blame if the product fails.
It’s interesting how the list of companies you mentioned all include some powerful figure(s) who can personally back an innovative, simple and risky idea.
Macs – Jobs Amazon – Bezos Pixar – Jobs Google – Larry Page and Sergei Brin Whole Foods – ?? iTunes – Jobs HBO – ??
I think the best way to measure passion and taste in a business person is to learn about their personal life. What are their interests and reading habits. What does it say about what they really value and what they really know? How well are their personal passions aligned with work? The best product people I know have a very strong alignment between their personal passions and their work.
This alignment doesn’t have to be in an obvious way. A software designer doesn’t have to spend their spare time reading software books to show a passion for what they do. A better clue would be if they spent their time reading about anthropology and architecture for example. Something that shows they have a passion to expand their field and take it beyond it’s current bounds. Jeff Hawkins from Palm is a good example and Alan Cooper is another.