Steve Jobs was a master of understatement. The more I researched my next book, the more I realized you had to focus on what he did versus what he said.
The man frequently talked about “saying no to 1,000 things”. The Apple section in my book focuses on 10 gutsy “yeses” that defined Apple’s success over the last few years. His devices say “Designed by Apple in California.”, but those five words mask a global journey beyond their initial design in Cupertino. The component suppliers, the carriers, the store locations, the App Store entrepreneurs around the globe make the United Nations look exclusionary. Jobs famously stood at the crossroads of “liberal arts” and “technology”. Again, a huge understatement. My book defines 12, not just 2, attributes of the technology elite – and Apple does well in the majority of the chapters focused on the attributes.
If Jobs had lived in Italy during the Renaissance, he would epitomize Sprezzatura. It is a word I first encountered in Castiglione’s The Book of the Courtier which is one of the best, first hand perspectives of the rich life in that innovative era. It roughly translates to nonchalance even in the face of big challenges.
And it is a word we all need in spades over the next few years. Our politicians need to tackle all kinds of complexity not just make speeches. Our healthcare needs to deliver far more value for the dollar. Our telecoms need to build out broadband networks, not just spend billions advertising what they don’t have. Our technology vendors need to deliver substantial new products, not just tweaks and endless tweets.
The good news is in many ways we are on the verge of major breakthroughs. For Christmas, I was given the gift of Physics of the Future by Michio Kaku. Based on interviews with 300 leading scientists, he paints a coherent path for what’s coming in medicine, astronomy, energy, computing and more. Even those will become more complex as we understand more on the Higgs particle and as we discover new planets. As Dr. Kaku says, however …”we are destined to become like the gods we once worshipped and feared”
Let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves.
Let’s do honor Steve Jobs. Let’s do as he did, not as he said. Let’s start pushing ourselves to handle bigger challenges than we have. And let’s do it with a nonchalance.
Sprezzatura: a key word for 2012 and beyond
Steve Jobs was a master of understatement. The more I researched my next book, the more I realized you had to focus on what he did versus what he said.
The man frequently talked about “saying no to 1,000 things”. The Apple section in my book focuses on 10 gutsy “yeses” that defined Apple’s success over the last few years. His devices say “Designed by Apple in California.”, but those five words mask a global journey beyond their initial design in Cupertino. The component suppliers, the carriers, the store locations, the App Store entrepreneurs around the globe make the United Nations look exclusionary. Jobs famously stood at the crossroads of “liberal arts” and “technology”. Again, a huge understatement. My book defines 12, not just 2, attributes of the technology elite – and Apple does well in the majority of the chapters focused on the attributes.
If Jobs had lived in Italy during the Renaissance, he would epitomize Sprezzatura. It is a word I first encountered in Castiglione’s The Book of the Courtier which is one of the best, first hand perspectives of the rich life in that innovative era. It roughly translates to nonchalance even in the face of big challenges.
And it is a word we all need in spades over the next few years. Our politicians need to tackle all kinds of complexity not just make speeches. Our healthcare needs to deliver far more value for the dollar. Our telecoms need to build out broadband networks, not just spend billions advertising what they don’t have. Our technology vendors need to deliver substantial new products, not just tweaks and endless tweets.
The good news is in many ways we are on the verge of major breakthroughs. For Christmas, I was given the gift of Physics of the Future by Michio Kaku. Based on interviews with 300 leading scientists, he paints a coherent path for what’s coming in medicine, astronomy, energy, computing and more. Even those will become more complex as we understand more on the Higgs particle and as we discover new planets. As Dr. Kaku says, however …”we are destined to become like the gods we once worshipped and feared”
Let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves.
Let’s do honor Steve Jobs. Let’s do as he did, not as he said. Let’s start pushing ourselves to handle bigger challenges than we have. And let’s do it with a nonchalance.
December 29, 2011 in Globalization and Technology, Industry Commentary | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)