Steve Jobs obsessively tinkered and polished Apple’s products (and his yacht, apparently). Jonathan Ive said that Apple doesn’t do focus groups. As Jobs once remarked, before Henry Ford, if you asked people what they wanted they would have asked for a more efficient horse.
Mark Zuckerberg built the first version of Facebook in a few weeks and it has sort of evolved and grown since then. Mainly in response to user feedback. It is the epitome of the ‘minimum viable product’ user-led development.
Which are you? “Don’t ship it until it’s perfect” or “Let’s ship this now and see how people use it”?
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Personally, I’d put myself at 75% Mark Z. and 25% Steve J, although I have to say most people in Hong Kong (where I live now) imagine themselves to be 75% Steve when their handiwork is often turns out to be more like 75% Mark.
Personally, I flip flop between the two roles – tinkerer vs. perfectionist – on a daily basis. Perhaps it would be better to stick to one or the other.
At times, for some types of projects, one just has to say “good enough is good enough”. Others really need to be perfect. The trick is being able to distinguish between the two.
I’m much more of a Zuckerberg at heart but I think it would be helpful for me to start adopting more of the Jobs approach, because in the past I’ve put a lot of projects into the field and had them fail due to my desire to share more than to create something of value….
Certainly something to think about and a good question to ponder going into a New Year.
Good question … and I’d say I’m 50 / 50 but the realm of what’s possible means that there is so much more to add, to correct and to refine; so many new technologies being developed that what tomorrow looks like is anyone’s guess.
The fact that we are co-creators makes each of us responsible for the entire planet in a way … and therefore we have no one else to blame but ourselves for either not speaking up, not supporting our local businesses, not giving when we can and for letting ordinariness become acceptable.
But as both Jobs and Zuckerberg have shown, change can happen in an instant. Thank god for that.
Steve Jobs built hardware products which can’t be improved after it is shipped, so certain perfection is required. It is Steve Jobs who also said, ‘real artists ship.’
However software, Mark’s creation, can be tinkered as feedback arrives. So there you could follow, release early, release often.
Mixing these two paradigms will create chaos.