What are the five products you want to focus on? Get rid of the rest, because they’re dragging you down. They’re turning you into Microsoft. They’re causing you to turn out products that are adequate but not great.
Interpretation
Focus on a few key products to achieve greatness instead of spreading yourself too thin.
Walter Isaacson's quote emphasizes the importance of focusing on a limited number of key products to ensure they reach their highest potential. By attempting to manage too many products, one risks mediocrity and losing sight of what truly matters, akin to how Microsoft historically produced many adequate products rather than striving for greatness in fewer offerings.
In practice
In a startup pitch to investors to highlight the importance of focusing on a few innovative products.
I visited Jobs for the last time in his Palo Alto, Calif., home. He had moved to a downstairs bedroom because he was too weak to go up and down stairs. He was curled up in some pain, but his mind was still sharp and his humor vibrant
I've always had an abundance of material about the subjects of my biographies.
Polite and velvety leaders, who take care to avoid bruising others, are generally not as effective at forcing change.
for Steve, less is always more, simpler is always better. Therefore, if you can build a glass box with fewer elements, it’s better, it’s simpler, and it’s at the forefront of technology. That’s where Steve likes to be, in both his products and his stores.
When there are multiple versions of a story, you really have three ways to go. You can pick the most sensational version. You can try to balance things in your gut to get to what you think is the honest truth. Or you can err on the side of kindness.
The people who invented the twenty-first century were pot-smoking, sandal-wearing hippies from the West Coast like Steve, because they saw differently,” he said. "The hierarchical systems of the East Coast, England, Germany, and Japan do not encourage this different thinking. The sixties produced an anarchic mind-set that is great for imagining a world not yet in existence.
Not the maker of plans and promises, but rather the one who offers faithful service in small matters. This is the person who is most likely to achieve what is good and lasting.
Riches do not come by crossing your fingers and walking through the day hoping. Riches and wealth comes from well-laid plans.
Knowledge will not attract money, unless it is organized, and intelligently directed, through practical plans of action, to the definite end of accumulation of money.
When I was 14, I did all kinds of different odd jobs. I had a chicken farm, had an ice cream operation in the summertime, worked as a caddy; all things to make money and save money. Save money in order to invest - that was the first step, though I never really accumulated very much because of other demands like bicycles and things like that.
You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again, while you're working on another one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success - but only if you persist.
No one knows what to say in the loser's locker room.
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