What are the five products you want to focus on? Get rid of the rest, because they’re dragging you down. They’re turning you into Microsoft. They’re causing you to turn out products that are adequate but not great.
Interpretation
Focus on a few key products to achieve greatness instead of spreading yourself too thin.
Walter Isaacson's quote emphasizes the importance of focusing on a limited number of key products to ensure they reach their highest potential. By attempting to manage too many products, one risks mediocrity and losing sight of what truly matters, akin to how Microsoft historically produced many adequate products rather than striving for greatness in fewer offerings.
In practice
In a startup pitch to investors to highlight the importance of focusing on a few innovative products.
I visited Jobs for the last time in his Palo Alto, Calif., home. He had moved to a downstairs bedroom because he was too weak to go up and down stairs. He was curled up in some pain, but his mind was still sharp and his humor vibrant
I've always had an abundance of material about the subjects of my biographies.
Polite and velvety leaders, who take care to avoid bruising others, are generally not as effective at forcing change.
for Steve, less is always more, simpler is always better. Therefore, if you can build a glass box with fewer elements, it’s better, it’s simpler, and it’s at the forefront of technology. That’s where Steve likes to be, in both his products and his stores.
When there are multiple versions of a story, you really have three ways to go. You can pick the most sensational version. You can try to balance things in your gut to get to what you think is the honest truth. Or you can err on the side of kindness.
The people who invented the twenty-first century were pot-smoking, sandal-wearing hippies from the West Coast like Steve, because they saw differently,” he said. "The hierarchical systems of the East Coast, England, Germany, and Japan do not encourage this different thinking. The sixties produced an anarchic mind-set that is great for imagining a world not yet in existence.
No man has a right to expect to succeed in life unless he understands his business, and nobody can understand his business thoroughly unless he learns it by personal application and experience.
Everybody's story of getting into the industry is just as difficult as the next person. Whether you come from money or no money, it's not easy... you have to offer yourself; you can't expect someone to get you.
It wasn't an excuse. It was a fact. He'd had to make his way alone, and no one - not rock stars, not professional athletes, not software billionaires, and not even geniuses - ever makes it alone.
I've said many times, 'You learn to win through not liking to lose.' And that's what I mean by learning how to win.
I base a lot of decisions on my gut, and going with an independent label was a good one.
Ask me what makes a champion runner, and I will tell you it helps to have the great good sense to choose your parents carefully.
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