Sequencing Apple's DNA

14On Structure and Contents

Steve Jobs often appeared as a highly irrational person. Capable of an all-encompassing inspired grand vision and at the same time focused like mad on tiny implementation details that nobody before him saw. What is it that may lie behind such an impossible mixture of traits?

14.1. The chasm

We normally look at innovating as an external, objective process and refer to it with a view to managing it. Could we take a corresponding perspective from within, whereby the inner setting of individuals is what makes innovation happen?

14.1.1. Business school

The classical school of thought separates macro- from micro-levels. Well-established in economics, it has also led firms to specialize in their staff.

There used to be a time – for instance, in the 1970s – when IBM trusted its 120 high-profile planners to think of the next product lines, each in his or her own business domain. They were each locked in safe rooms and were continuously amassing enormous amount of data and information about their own ongoing business, from which they drew intelligence about the next phases. At the same time, thousand of developers and implementers focused on the nitty gritty level of operations.

The division of labor is no new thing. But it has percolated the granularity levels too: those who think big and those who think small.

14.1.2. Apple

Jobs was a well-known template for crossing the macro-, meso- (the middle level where we find our neighborhoods) and micro-levels ...