乔布斯的创新故事_创新工作的真实故事

乔布斯的创新故事

The iPhone has provided access to the entire world’s knowledge at our fingertips, given society an incredible amount of freedom and an unparalleled level of convenience. Not only has it given us this access, but this powerful technological innovation is beautifully designed, powerful and intuitive.

iPhone为我们社会提供了无与伦比的自由度和无与伦比的便捷性，使我们触手可及的地方可以访问全世界的知识。 它不仅为我们提供了这种访问权限，而且这种强大的技术创新还经过精心设计，强大而直观。

However, while the iPhone has permanently transformed society, it started off with humble beginnings. It might seem like an insurmountable task to replicate an innovation with the same level of impact, value, and scale as the iPhone again. I argue, however, that it is more accessible than we might initially think: we are just not looking at innovation the right way.

然而，尽管iPhone永久改变了社会，但它的开端却很不起眼。 再次复制具有与iPhone相同水平的影响力，价值和规模的创新，似乎是一项艰巨的任务。 但是，我认为，它比我们最初想象的更容易获得：我们只是没有以正确的方式看待创新。

As a society, we have come to view successful innovation as consisting of monumental changes, big risks, and charismatic entrepreneurs putting it all on the line to make their vision come to life. This may have some truth to it, but is this truly how innovation works?

作为一个社会，我们已经将成功的创新视为巨大的变革，巨大的风险和有超凡魅力的企业家所组成，将其全部置于一线以使他们的愿景变为现实。 这可能有些道理，但这真的是创新的工作方式吗？

Let us find out together.

让我们一起找出答案。

什么是创新？ (What is Innovation?)

The most widely accepted definition of innovation comes from the late innovation guru Clayton Christensen. He describes innovation as falling into one of two buckets — sustaining or disruptive innovation.

最广泛接受的创新定义来自已故的创新大师Clayton Christensen。 他将创新描述为两个类别之一：持续创新或破坏性创新。

Safi Bahcall in his book Loonshoots, argues that innovation is more sequential than it is categorical. He argues that many innovations do not start off with the intention of being disruptive. They start small and serendipitously but slowly scale to be iteratively disruptive over time.

萨菲•巴赫卡尔(Safi Bahcall)在他的“ 懒人 ”(Loonshoots)一书中指出， 创新比绝对分类更具有序贯性 。 他认为，许多创新并非以破坏性的目的开始。 它们从小巧而偶然地开始，但随着时间的流逝逐渐扩展为迭代破坏性的。

“We tend to underestimate the impact of innovation in the long run but overestimate its impact in the short run” — Roy Amara

“我们往往低估了创新的长期影响，但高估了短期的影响” – Roy Amara

For instance, the iPhone and iPod are retrospectively regarded as disruptive innovations in their respective fields, but they did not start that way. The iPod was mainly marketed by Apple as an efficient way of holding ‘1,000 songs in your pocket’. The iPhone further built on this and Steve Jobs mainly created it as an efficient way of ‘making calls and listening to music’ on one device.

例如，iPhone和iPod被追溯地视为各自领域中的颠覆性创新，但它们并非以这种方式开始。 iPod主要由Apple销售，是一种有效的“口袋里保存1,000首歌曲”的方式。 iPhone进一步以此为基础，而史蒂夫·乔布斯(Steve Jobs)主要将其创建为一种在一部设备上“拨打电话和听音乐”的有效方式。

As you can see, these were hardly disruptive goals at the time, so where did this grand narrative of innovation come from?

如您所见，这些在当时几乎不是破坏性的目标，那么这种宏伟的创新叙述从何而来？

1.通过不断的渐进主义，创新正在逐步改善 (1. Innovation is improving gradually through relentless incrementalism)

Relentless incrementalism is the idea that dramatic improvements are more likely to be achieved by systematically testing small variations in everything we do, rather than through dramatic leaps. Innovation is more like a constant direction to follow and not necessarily a destination one will reach.

坚持不懈的渐进主义是这样的想法，即通过系统地测试我们所做的每件事的细微差异，而不是通过飞跃，更可能实现巨大的改进。 创新更像是一个不断遵循的方向，并不一定是一个目标。

We have seen this level of iteration through the iPhone. Each new model incrementally improves on the last generation. This might be through new features, more intuitive design elements, and software updates. The difference between the first iPhone and its current iteration is stark. In 10 years, however, we may look back and say the same thing about today’s latest iPhone.

我们已经通过iPhone看到了这种迭代水平。 每个新模型都在上一代产品的基础上进行了逐步改进。 这可能是通过新功能，更直观的设计元素以及软件更新来实现的。 第一款iPhone与当前版本之间的区别非常明显。 但是，在10年后，我们可能会回头对今天的最新iPhone讲同样的话。

Steve Jobs was relentless in finding out what the world needed (or didn’t know it needed) and unquestionably focussed on inventing ways to produce it with each new iPhone. Yet for the slow and gradual nature of the development of the iPhone, it is only retrospectively regarded as being immediately disruptive and transformative.

史蒂夫·乔布斯(Steve Jobs)不遗余力地发现世界需要什么(或不知道需要什么)，并且毫无疑问地专注于发明生产每台新iPhone的方法。 然而，由于iPhone的发展缓慢且渐进，它仅被追溯地视为具有颠覆性和变革性。

2.随着时间的推移，创新是累积，集体和复合的。 (2. Innovation is cumulative, collective, and compounds exponentially over time.)

Pretty much everything that makes the iPhone what it is today is the amalgamation of innovations originating from the government that was ultimately paid by society through tax.

几乎所有使iPhone成为今天的东西都是来自政府的创新的融合，这些创新最终由社会通过税收来支付。

Pretty hard to believe, right? Let us unpack that for a second.

很难相信，对吧？ 让我们打开包装一秒钟。

Apple did not invent Wifi technology, facial recognition software or touch-screen capabilities. Steve Jobs didn’t create the internet, launch GPS satellites into orbit or build phone towers across the world. In short, Steve Jobs and Apple did not create any of the technologies that make them successful but rather built off the backs of these technologies.

苹果公司没有发明Wifi技术，面部识别软件或触摸屏功能。 史蒂夫·乔布斯(Steve Jobs)并未创造互联网，将GPS卫星发射入轨道或在世界范围内建造电话塔。 简而言之，史蒂夫·乔布斯(Steve Jobs)和苹果公司(Apple)并未创造任何使它们成功的技术，而是在这些技术的基础上建立起来的。

Apple was more of a beneficiary rather than a benefactor of technological development.

苹果公司更是受益者，而不是技术发展的受益者。

In Mariana Mazzucato’s book Entrepreneurial State, she describes that most of these technologies found in the iPhone were originally created by the US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) or related government agencies (CSIRO) and made widely available by countless researchers, policymakers and politicians. It took years of fruitless trial and error, serendipity and luck for these technologies to develop.

在Mariana Mazzucato的《 Entrepreneurial State》一书中，她描述了iPhone中发现的大多数技术最初都是由美国国防高级研究计划局(DARPA)或相关政府机构(CSIRO)创造的，并被无数研究人员，政策制定者和政客广泛使用。 。 这些技术的开发花了多年的无休止的反复试验，偶然性和运气。

Innovation is, therefore, more cumulative, collective and is a result of an ecosystem of supporters and investment in public infrastructure. It requires a whole village to nurture innovation than it is solely a function of a genius, venture capitalist or being a risk-taking organization.

因此，创新是更具累积性，集体性的，是支持者生态系统和对公共基础设施投资的结果。 它不仅需要天才，风险资本家或冒险组织的作用，还需要整个村庄来促进创新。

3.创新遵循发展规律 (3. Innovation follows the law of evolution)

This might seem like a controversial opinion, but I think the iPhone (or a version of it) would have been invented if Steve Jobs and Apple did not exist.

这似乎是一个有争议的观点，但是我认为，如果史蒂夫·乔布斯和苹果不存在，那么iPhone(或者它的一个版本)就会被发明出来。

Why? The answer is that society and technological progress was already trending towards that direction. It was only a matter of time, not genius before a version of the smartphone would be invented. It may not have been so beautifully designed or intuitive, but given enough time, we would eventually have gotten there.

为什么？ 答案是社会和技术进步已经朝着这个方向发展。 发明智能手机的版本只是时间问题，而不是天才 。 它可能不是设计得那么精美或直观，但是如果有足够的时间，我们最终会到达那里。

Innovation is more evolutionary than it is revolutionary.

创新比进化更具革命性。

This is taking nothing away from Steve Jobs. He is truly still a genius and visionary, but innovation follows the law of evolution rather than revolution. This means that innovations are more a function of the sequence, context and a good amount of luck rather than a moment of genius.

这与乔布斯毫无关系。 他确实仍然是一个天才和有远见的人，但是创新遵循进化的规律，而不是革命的规律 。 这意味着创新更多是取决于顺序，环境和运气，而不是天才。

In his book, Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell describes this as ‘a case of the right person, right time, right place’ to understand outliers like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Bill Joy. All of them born (coincidentally?) between 1953-1955, allowing them to be the ideal age, in the ideal country (America), in the ideal time period and probably the ideal gender and ethnicity (sexism and racism were still pervasive during this time), to effectively leverage and exploit the emergent technologies of coding, the internet and communication tools.

马尔科姆·格拉德威尔( Malcolm Gladwell)在他的书《 离群值》中将这描述为“了解合适人选，正确时间，正确地点的案例”，以了解史蒂夫·乔布斯，比尔·盖茨和比尔·乔伊等离群值。 所有人(偶然地？)出生于1953-1955年之间 ，使他们成为理想国家(美国)，理想时期内的理想年龄，并且可能是理想的性别和种族(在此期间，性别歧视和种族主义仍然普遍存在)时间)，以有效利用和利用编码，互联网和通讯工具等新兴技术。

The law of evolution is not just limited to the iPhone, Microsoft, or the Macintosh Computer either. In his book Evolution of Everything, Matt Ridley describes how almost all our greatest inventions, such as the light bulb would have come anyway, even if the ‘original’ inventors didn’t exist.

进化定律不仅限于iPhone，Microsoft或Macintosh计算机。 马特·里德利( Matt Ridley)在他的《 万物的进化》一书中描述了即使没有“原始”发明人，我们几乎所有最伟大的发明(如电灯泡)都会如何出现。

This is why we can see 21 patents from different inventors for the lightbulb at nearly identical times across the world in the 1870s. This was a time where communication was very expensive and knowledge couldn’t be widely shared.

这就是为什么我们在1870年代全世界几乎相同的时间看到灯泡的不同发明者的21项专利的原因。 在那个时候，交流非常昂贵，知识无法广泛共享。

As a society, we tend to ride rather than invent technological waves. Technology will find its inventors, rather than vice versa.

作为一个社会，我们倾向于骑乘而不是发明技术浪潮。 技术将找到它的发明者，而不是相反。

摘要 (Summary)

One of the flaws in the way we recount stories of innovation is that we unfairly single out individuals, ignoring the contribution of others, the gradual nature of innovation and the serendipitous environment needed to make innovation happen.

我们叙述创新故事的方式中的缺陷之一是，我们不公平地挑出个人，而忽略了他人的贡献，创新的渐进性质和进行创新所需的偶然环境。

The true story of Steve Jobs and the iPhone, far from illustrating the importance of a heroic genius, turns out to tell the opposite story: of innovation as a gradual, incremental, collective yet inescapably inevitable process. Steve Jobs was more the final link in a long chain of technological development than the creator of the chain.

史蒂夫·乔布斯(Steve Jobs)和iPhone的真实故事并没有说明英雄般的天才的重要性，反而讲出了相反的故事：创新是一个渐进，渐进，集体但不可避免的不可避免的过程。 史蒂夫·乔布斯(Steve Jobs)比起链条的创造者，更是长链技术发展中的最后一环。

翻译自: https://medium.com/swlh/the-real-story-of-how-innovation-works-66b51e2cf289

乔布斯的创新故事