There’s a temptation in our networked age to think that ideas can be developed by email and iChat. That’s crazy. Creativity comes from spontaneous meetings, from random discussions. You run into someone, you ask what they’re doing, you say ‘wow,’ and soon you’re cooking up all sorts of ideas.
Interpretation
Creativity flourishes through personal interactions rather than just digital communication.
Steve Jobs emphasizes that true creativity emerges from spontaneous human interactions and face-to-face conversations. In our digital world, it's easy to rely solely on virtual tools for collaboration, but he argues that the best ideas often arise when people meet organically, share thoughts, and engage in dynamic discussions, leading to innovative concepts and solutions.
In practice
This quote can be shared at a creative conference to inspire networking.
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.
Everything that's created comes out of silence. Your thoughts emerge from the nothingness of silence. Your words come out of this void. Your very essence emerged from emptiness. All creativity requires some stillness.
When we are involved in [creativity], we feel that we are living more fully than during the rest of life.
We need to make the world safe for creativity and intuition, for it's creativity and intuition that will make the world safe for us.
I have a lot of confidence, but little Self-Esteem. This has given me a tremendous creative spark because it forced me to keep proving myself.
We are all creative, but by the time we are three of four years old, someone has knocked the creativity out of us. Some people shut up the kids who start to tell stories. Kids dance in their cribs, but someone will insist they sit still. By the time the creative people are ten or twelve, they want to be like everyone else.
Don't wait for permission to do something creative.
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