With Steve Jobs' retirement announcement, a lot is being said about his tremendous successes. But he had a lot of spectacular failures, too, like the Apple I and Lisa. We could learn something by concentrating on those:
Jobs failed better than anyone else in Silicon Valley, maybe better than anyone in corporate America. By that I mean Jobs did what only the greatest entrepreneurs can do: learn from their failures. I don't mean learn from their mistakes. I mean learn from their abject, humiliating, bonehead, epic fails.
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There's a moral here for a Washington culture that fears failure too much. In today's Washington, large banks aren't permitted to fail; nor are large auto firms. Next up will be too-big-to-fail hospital systems. Steve Jobs is a reminder that failure is a good and necessary thing. And that sometimes the greatest glories are born of catastrophe.
It's not just Washington. We've evolved into a risk-averse culture that is afraid of taking chances because of the threats of lawsuits or the danger of looking foolish or the desire to reduce all "something bad could happen" odds to million-to-one long shots. Hardly any progress comes except what is made by people willing to take risks with the knowledge that failure is a likely outcome. I think that's one of the hardest lessons there is to learn, to move out of our comfort zones and take a chance on something unknown. I had a boss here a few years ago who had the greatest attitude about suggestions from staff for doing something different. "OK," he'd say. "Let's try that. If it doesn't work, we'll quit and try something else." Not many people like that.
The article also points out why Jobs has been such a great entrepreneur. It wasn't because he gave customers what they wanted -- lots of people can do that:
Jobs gave people products they didn't know they wanted, and then made those products indispensable to their lives.
I didn't know I needed the ability to read the Wall Street Journal and The Corner on a handsome handheld device at my breakfast table, on the Metro, on the Acela, or in any Starbucks I entered. But Steve Jobs did. I didn't know I wanted to mix and match my music collection on a computer and take it with me wherever I went, but Steve Jobs did. I didn't know I wanted a portable multimedia platform that would permit me and my kids to hurl angry birds out of a slingshot at thieving pigs. But Steve Jobs did.
