What's inside his brain:
- Focus means saying no. Jobs focuses Apple's limited resources on a small number of projects it can execute well.
- Stay focused means do not allow feature creep. Keep things simple, which is a virtue in a world of overly complex technology.
- Generate alternatives and pick the best. Jobs insists on choices.
- Don't be afraid to start from scratch. Mac OS X was worth doing over, even if it took one thousand programmers three years of nonstop toil to do it.
- Avoid the Osborne effect. keep the new goodies secret until they are ready to ship, lest customers stop buying the current stuff while waiting for new stuff.
- Don't shit on your doorstep. Apple's engineers hated the old Mac OS, but Jobs ordered a positive spin on it.
- Don't listen to your customers. They don't know what they want.
- Don't compromise. Jobs's obsession with excellence has created a unique development process that churns out truly great products.
- Design is function, not form. For Jobs, design is the way the product works.
- Respect materials. The iMac was plastic. The iPhone is glass. Their forms follow the materials they are made from.
- Partner only with A players and fire bozos. Talented staff are a competitive advantage that puts you ahead of your rivals.
- Don't listen to yes man. Argument and debate foster creative thinking. Jobs wants partners who challenge his ideas.
- Find a passion for your work. Jobs has it, and it's infectious.
- Become a great intimidator, inspire through fear and a desire to please.
- Study the market and the industry. Jobs is constantly looking to see what new technologies are coming down the pike.
- Don't consciously think about innovation. Systematizing innovation is like watching Michael Dell try to dance. Painful.
- Concentrate on products. Products are the gravitational force that pulls it together.
- Steal. Be shameless about stealing other people's great ideas.
- Connect. For Jobs, creativity is simply connecting things.
- Burn the boats, Jobs killed the most popular iPod to make room for new, thinner model. Burn the boats, and you must stand and fight.
- If you miss the boat, work hard to catch up. Jobs initially failed to see the digital music revolution but soon caught up.
- Look for vectors going in time - bigger changes in the wider world that can be used to your advantage. The iPod greatly benefited from improvements in batteries and screens driven by the cell phone industry.
- Embrace the team. The iPod does not have a sole progenitor, there is no single Podfather. It is never just one person - success always has many fathers.