Transcript:
Ken siegel apple succeeds because they keep things insanely simple like the title of your book why is it so hard for everybody else to do that well that’s actually a reason I wrote the book I worked not only with Apple I was the ad agency creative director I didn’t work at Apple but in that same capacity as an agency guy I’ve worked with other companies like Dell and Intel and IBM and my experience to be honest you know the experience with Apple was very very good but it really didn’t dawn on me to write the book until my I had my experiences with the other companies because they they seemed incapable of making things simple you know again I’d look at things from the marketing side but they build these processes into the system that just make things take three times as long and multiple layers of approvers of approvals and committees and all these kinds of things and then you get to the end the end product that’s supposed to be made so much better because they they do all this complicated stuff and it’s actually not better and you worked directly with Steve Jobs on this what was his secret for keeping things simple at Apple well he’s given he he has been quoted in the past as saying things like you know Apple you know it’s like the world’s largest startup we have no committees at Apple that kind of thing and I think that was his his way of working if he ever sensed anything was starting to reek of a big company behavior he would just quash it and you know do it in the style that he’s famous for so if he detected behaviors you know that we’re starting to feel like a big company you know something that was just too complicated he’d say we’re not doing that do you think that Tim Cook will be able to keep things and samely simple as the company grows its nearing almost a trillion dollar market cap interesting question because this whole idea of acting like a start-up you know is fine well even when Steve said that they were a huge company but as they become even huger you do have to ask yourself how long that can go on I think Tim I don’t know Tim personally so you know from what I’ve seen and heard I think he’s perfectly capable of carrying the ball forward I think what Steve created you know was was very much institutionalized but you have work with number of different companies as their creative director which companies do you think have the promise to succeed in the future because investors out there are looking for the next Apple Apple has already run up people want to find companies with that kind of potential for growth anyone out there that can learn some of the lessons from insanely simple from Apple good question again I can only speak from my experience with with which was with these larger companies like IBM and Dell and Intel and those people had issues they had complexity issues shall we call them I’m sure that there are companies that work more in an entrepreneurial startup kind of fashion I’m not personally aware of any but any advice for entrepreneurs out there starting out should they create a some sort of a list of things to do or a mandate how to keep things simple before they start growing too quickly interestingly I think Steve here’s a way of doing it was just instinctive you know if you started to behave in a certain way he would just sort of SWAT you down and say we’re not doing it that way part of me I’d like to believe somebody could go in with a list and say here’s what we’re going to do but I think that’s almost a big company behavior right there I think you need to just understand a lot of it’s just common sense I think people don’t give Steve credit for that part of his behavior yes he was genius in many ways but a lot of his decisions were just common sense there’s a right and a wrong the problem is that sometimes the right comes with greater expense or great at greater time you know whatever the effort that required was we would be required in the Dells and Intel’s of the world I found that people would say well that cost too much we can’t do it Steve seem to be you know uninhibited by those kinds of considerations and we just really do the right thing
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