Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.
Interpretation
Innovating can lead to mistakes, and it's important to recognize and learn from them promptly.
This quote by Steve Jobs emphasizes the importance of acknowledging mistakes made during the process of innovation. Rather than hiding errors, the best course of action is to openly admit them and use the experience to refine and enhance future innovations, fostering a culture of learning and improvement.
In practice
During a team meeting to discuss project setbacks, this quote can remind members that failure is part of the process.
Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service. The iMac is not just the color or translucence or the shape of the shell. The essence of the iMac is to be the finest possible consumer computer in which each element plays together.
It is piracy, not overt online music stores, which is our main competitor.
The people who are doing the work are the moving force behind the Macintosh. My job is to create a space for them, to clear out the rest of the organization and keep it at bay.
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.
Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It's not about money. It's about the people you have, how you're led, and how much you get it.
For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: 'If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?' And whenever the answer has been 'No' for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Most innovative things are not obvious to other people at the time. You have to believe in yourself. If you've got a good idea, follow it even though others tell you it's not.
My view is there's no bad time to innovate.
There's a silly notion that failure's not an option at NASA. Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.
I just invent, then wait until man comes around to needing what I've invented.
The culture is what creates the foundation for all future innovation. If you break the culture, you break the machine that creates your products.
Innovation comes ultimately from a diversity of perspectives. So when you combine ideas from different industries or different cultures, that's when you have the best sense of developing groundbreaking ideas.
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