How To Innovate Like Steve Jobs

All the stuff that we've been reading in the local mainstream media and, all the interviews *blah-blah**yawn* never really tell you how innovative ideas come about.

There's a scene from a great 1980s movie, Working Girl, where the media tycoon, Trask, asked Melanie Griffith's character (who had been accused of stealing Sigourney Weaver's character's idea), "What was your impulse (for the multi-million dollar merger deal)?"

What was your impulse?

Where does the creative spark come from?

Do rote-learning help with creativity?

Does the lack of reading help with creativity?

Don't worry, I am just being rhetorical. Not substantive. Just light fluff. Just like how politicians talk at general assemblies.

Anyway, back to the point.

The lead-in to the extract that I'm setting out below is that we have to understand that Steve Jobs had a restless and inquisitive mind. He has always been a passionate man. I imagine that he reads voraciously.

True, he was a college dropout. But, remember that, just as it was with Bill Gates, Jobs dropped out of college because he had a kind of epiphany - a realisation that he really wanted to get into the nascent computer industry of the time. It was NOT because he felt that he was too dumb to pass his exams.

Some of us are plodders. We follow the syllabus. Others, like Jobs, have minds that are wired differently.

Remember the scene from A Beautiful Mind where Russell Crowe's character, John Nash was standing at the pub bar in Princeton. The girl walks in. All the men turned their heads to look at her. Suddenly it hit Nash. He saw the patterns of probabilities and possibilities in human behaviour that led him to his great Game Theory postulation. It eventually won Nash the Nobel Prize (was it for Economics or Mathematics?).

So, read on...the piece is surced from Forbes:

There’s a chapter in the book called, “Kick-Start Your Brain.” In it, Gallo explains that what scientists have found is that great innovators practice what’s called “association”. They look outside their industry for ideas they can apply within their organization. Steve Jobs has been doing that his whole life.

Here are two examples:

1) Gallo says Jobs’ inspiration for not having a designated cashier in the Apple Store, came from the Four Seasons hotel chain, which has a concierge;

2) When Jobs and Steve Wozniak were creating the Apple 2 computer, which became one of best selling personal computers of its time, Jobs wanted a computer people would have in their homes. But instead of looking at his competitors, he walked through the kitchen appliance isle at Macy’s for inspiration.

In that same chapter, scientists explain to Gallo that another key to kick-starting your brain and get those creative juices flowing is to try new and novel experiences that push you outside your comfort zone and push your interests.