Steve Jobs not wanting the iphone
The iPhone has completely changed our society, and its story is fascinating. Did you know that Steve Jobs didn’t want to make a phone? (Grant, 2021) I assume we all know who Steve Jobs was. What about all the collaborators that brought this idea to life? The people who worked with Steve Jobs are one of the reasons why Steve—and Apple—were so successful. The excellent talents working with him were able to bend his reality and persuade him with new ideas. At that time, Jobs believed the network providers would have too much power over the consumer, deciding who could access their network or not. Jobs thought it would be too hard to collaborate with them and interact with the consumers directly. His team persuaded him he should do it, and Jobs finally agreed. Later, he didn’t want any outside apps. It took another year for him to reconsider this. Finally, the firm launched the App Store in 2007. Within nine months after the launch, the Apple Store experienced a billion downloads, and a decade later, the iPhone had generated more than one trillion dollars in revenue. According to the research of Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist at Wharton University, most of the time, people in power are not listening. We all know leaders who are overconfident stubborn. “When someone tried hard to alter their thinking, they snapped back like a rubber band” Our jobs as aspiring change-makers are not to stop being creative if someone says no. We have to learn to join forces with others and persuade that person. Steve Jobs was confident in his thinking, but he invited people to challenge and help him overcome his own worst instincts. People like Tony Fadell were one of them. Tony is the inventor of the iPod and a co-creator of the iPhone. He worked for months with his engineering team to change Steve’s objections and build networks around him to make his idea possible. Tony is a master persuader and used the power of networks—him and his team—to change and influence Steve’s mind. This shaped the story of the Apple we know today. To sum this up, having an idea is great, but if nobody listens to it, the idea will never take off the ground. The chapter reminded me how important it is to think about scaling to produce and change something meaningful in this world. Your relationships are everything, and your network will magnify your company and product.
Grant, Adam. “Persuading the Unpersuadable.” Harvard Business Review, March-April 2021.
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