14.1. The chasm

We normally look at innovating as an external, objective process and refer to it with a view to managing it. Could we take a corresponding perspective from within, whereby the inner setting of individuals is what makes innovation happen?

14.2. Developing the chasm

Tracing back to history, we find similar traits in a few characters. One of them was Leonardo Da Vinci. Strange parallels can be found in Jobs’ and Da Vinci’s lives. They were both vegetarians, one was an abandoned child, the other was an illegitimate child. Leonardo was both an artist and a scientist. A most creative mind and an acute engineer. He usually wrote from right to left, and it has been suggested he was left-handed. Jobs declared himself ambidextrous (as suggested by example in an interview with Newsweek in 1984¹), indirectly recognizing the symmetric activation of brain hemispheres in his staff too. Of all the peculiar traits, Leonardo and Jobs indeed have much in common. They are:

1. 1) Hemispheric balance. Both are inveterate innovators who decisively blend art and science in one single human quest. Their brain seems to equally solicit their two hemispheres. Leonardo’s mirror writing echoes the cross-hemispheric linkage of the cerebellum, whose “brain organ” seems to play an eminent role in blending rational and creative ways of thinking. Present research attributes heavy importance to the interrelations between the two hemispheres. Like Leonardo, Jobs made no separation between engineering and artistic work, and wanted his engineers to be creative as artists are. Recognition of this artistic talent is exemplified by the story of him insisting that the Macintosh team signatures be present inside the first Macintosh (see: http://www.vintagecomputing.com/index.php/archives/391).
2. 2) Varying Observer–Subject distance. Acute observers of their times who were never drawn into the surrounding background noise and, at the same time, went to unsought productive depths with intense passion.
3. 3) Thinking transdisciplinarily. No domain is out of reach per se. A method from within helps in crossing established boundaries and capturing the essence of what lies beyond. Audacious thinkers, shameless players and incorrigible forerunners.
4. 4) Quantum behavior. A living ecosystem that evolves by generating its own future.

We have studied Leonardo at length over the past few years [COR, 10], and could notice a “Leonardo method”. Three common features among others stand out are:

• – capable of working on a series of projects concurrently, and finding a unifying framework, not a division of his own time and energy;
• – an ability to simplify to the quintessence after due observation;
• – a genuine capacity to meaningfully link up apparently independent observations.

The above denotes an unleashed systemic thinking. When Jobs repeats his well-known “connecting the dots” mantra, we visualize Leonardo glaring at birds to invent the helicopter and so on. Countless examples are found in both biographies. Leonardo did not hesitate to dissect corpses in order to draw better models for his design from biology. Moreover, this was seriously heretic activity during his time.

A famous artist who connected the dots in special ways was Maurits Cornelis Escher. He customarily designed spaces that loop onto themselves, thus creating scenes where things become circular, instead of remaining linear as per a traditional depiction. No past and no future, just a universe where “things are instantaneous”. And this exactly expresses one basic quantum property. By working linearly, we presuppose a total order on things, hence past then future. But here, everything we do modifies the future. You bring your ecosystem with you in the change. And this is what we see with Apple: only one perduring ecosystem that renews onto itself.

Look at Apple product interfaces: they do not contain things that are ordered linearly (take e.g. iTunes). The interface that you are given understands the general concepts far better, which guide you toward a pseudo-linear action. Not a side instruction manual, but your own desire. In doing so, the interface contains no slowing content, no thinking brake.

Someone who spans not less than personal computers, animation films, the music industry, smartphones, tablets, retail stores and digital publication by: (1) systematically reinventing a fresh identity for each of them, and (2) connecting them seamlessly into giant ecosystems, is the mark of an adventurous systemic mind. How many core products churns an Apple? Less than 10 (iMacs, MacBooks, iPhones, iPods, iTunes (and Store), Apple Store, App Store and OS X. Each is a leader on its own. How many mature paintings made a Leonardo? Arguably less than ten. Each being top of the line...five centuries later. Both in subject matter and in the fabric, including the technology used.

Yet, the drawings, the sketches and the blueprints are innumerable for each. As Jony Ive, Job’s sister soul for design, once said “we would be ashamed to say how many prototypes we make” before a product.

In a nutshell: to understand Apple, scrutinize Steve Jobs. And to understand Jobs, investigate Leonardo Da Vinci. Appendix 3 provides an original and thorough analysis of the way the Maestro thought and worked. We believe this becomes of key importance for inventing new ways of doing business in the next future.