Seems it's a career-long motto of his. Here's my little story from when he told that to a room of record labels in 2003: <a href="http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2004/08/say_no_by_default.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2004/08/say_no_by_defa...</a><p>==<p>In June of 2003, Steve Jobs gave a small private presentation about the iTunes Music Store to some independent record label people.<p>My favorite line of the day was when people kept raising their hand saying, "Does it do ___(x)___?", "Do you plan to add ___(y)___?".<p>Finally Jobs said, "Wait wait - put your hands down. Listen: I know you have a thousand ideas for all the cool features iTunes <i>could</i> have. So do we. But we don’t want a thousand features. That would be ugly.<p>Innovation is not about saying yes to everything. It’s about saying NO to all but the most crucial features."
Almost all company leaders are aware of the importance of design, simplicity, and usability. The problem isn't lack of information. They know about Apple products. They want to be Apple. But most of them never end up with a product or service that is like what they say.<p>I really do think good product design is all about the courage to follow through on obvious good ideas (like the article said). It's the thing business execs need to get through their skulls. The hard part isn't thinking of good ideas or innovating, it's discipline and courage. They all say they want simplicity and good design, but inevitably cave to deadlines, politics, and short-term financial decisions.<p>It's unbearably frustrating to watch in my company.
"People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. <i>I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done.</i>”
I remember reading a similar article about Linus Torvalds (saying no to the inclusion of much code in the Linux kernel codebase). The gist of the article was that he spends much more time rejecting new code than he spends actually coding. I can't seem to find the article now though...
Me on the importance of not guiding your business thinking with buzz phrases. Apple's business is much more complicated than this saying 'no' bit (they and Dell built incredible supply chains).<p>As a counterpoint, there are tons of businesses who've said "yes" lots and have had great success: SalesForce, Oracle, IBM, GE, Microsoft, Google, Nike (yes, even if they though what Jobs said was smart).<p>I appreciate the article's highlighting of a particular management orientation, but this particular orientation is far from unique or broadly suitable. Know your product, know your market, know your team, know your capabilities and think deeply about how to compose all of those things into an ongoing, growing business concern. Then in 20 years, you'll be giving an interview about how you did it by focusing on the important of telling jokes or something.
Jobs is right.<p>Lately too much relatively "crappy stuff" has been coming out of Google, and it's part of the reason Apple's brand just surpassed Google's, where it had been number one for the last 4 years.<p>Seth Godin warned Google about this 5 years ago, right when its brand was reaching the number one spot.<p>He said, "If you blow it too many times in a row, they won't care about Google anymore, and you'll be back to that slot" <a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6909078385965257294#" rel="nofollow">http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6909078385965257294...</a>).<p>Hopefully Page will reinvigorate things now that he's back at the helm.
If this "essentialism" were to be consistent, I would assume there would be only one iPhone rather than what, five?<p>It's a model with merit, but it's not a holy thing that it sometimes is made out to be. It's still, rather obvious perhaps, subordinate to making profits.