Setting a new stage

Time is up. Our times require that we transcend the old paradigms of the 20th Century: fixed models, closed systems, linear thinking, etc. Now is the time for new thinking ways: changing the rules, building a genuine consciousness of innovation, acquiring a capacity for sustainability, etc. But, the question is … how can we learn?

In the course of societal and business evolution, sometimes, peculiar elements come to our attention. These may distinguish themselves as a form of a paradigmatic change signaling a distinctive phenomenon; something of particular importance, both unexpected and unprecedented.

A few centuries ago, a host of most creative individuals did what civilization had not seen for many centuries. It sparked from a European region that was not get called Italy yet and spread all over the continent to break free from the conventional, disrupting all domains of knowledge and art, and flourishing to heights in every domain of human endeavor. It was called the Renaissance. It changed the future in ways that were dubbed impossible, even unimaginable before.

Out of that creative wave, one specific man, born in Tuscany, came to show a continuous flow of innovators so varied, so intense, so precise and so structured, that, even today, it just seems impossible from a mere individual. He was named Leonardo as an improbable child, and they just mentioned he came “da Vinci”, i.e. from the village of Vinci in beautiful central hilly Tuscany.

A flurry of studies have surrounded Leonardo Da Vinci’s works over five centuries – each time surveying through the best lenses of the time – the countless number of domains of human activity which he touched, transformed, transcended and signposted as a remarkable legacy for humanity.

But, a hidden side was left relatively untouched: the way of the artifacts, the thinking way which underpinned the visible side of the Master.

We were fortunate enough to have been dipped into the family just beneath the Vinci hills at very young age, and returning so many times there, including, in this century, to specifically dig out what we believe to represent a “Leonardo” method. This book provides enough background material about Da Vinci’s way we unearthed. And why is this so?

The brief passage on earth of individuals of such caliber results in shaping the world’s future (e.g. putting an end to dark medieval times, in the case of Leonardo). But at the same time, it is very hard to be conscious of the real meaning of what was going on during or slightly after his life. Would those few notables having seen the fresh Mona Lisa – La Gioconda – painting that Leonardo carried with him throughout his adult life, or the few Dukes and other governing personalities of the time, his civil and military defense master plans, imagine that the creations would still puzzle and awe us today?

By a probable similar token, we feel that the passage of Steve Jobs on this planet signifies another Renaissance yet to come, probably of a different type. We are not speaking of Internet of Things linking up Apple Watches with people and devices. Nor even the iPod and iPad and the many Mac models – although, these are the offspring of a generous and revolutionary matrix that bore them. We need to see a wider picture. And for this to happen, to uncover the thinking line which surfaces from time to time, often through citations and speeches, and imprints on our perception.

From Tuscany to the Californian Silicon Valley – two sunny places that are not short of visionary founders despite being 500 years apart – it is not the history that is usually taught officially, but it is the chaos of the human mind that signs off a new era in ways that were simply unimaginable mere decades before. We will provide a number of his citations in Appendix 3 as a way to reveal, piece by piece, the parallel Leonardo–Jobs.

We see these elements as a form of future “technology tools”, not assuredly in the sense we would give today to “technology” or to “tools”. We may view them as rather abstract perhaps, only because we are not used to thinking in such terms. But, these deep traits are borne out in the recent company’s insanely great ascent.

Why is this book different?

Over the last few years, many books have been published about Apple and its legendary co-founders, and we believe this is just the beginning. Most of them framed the company’s fabric as something exceptional or heralded the difficulties, triumphs and despairs of Steven Paul Jobs, his exactness in dealing with visions, plans, form factors and people alike. The story of Apple has already been extensively documented and we provide the main references on the subject in the bibliography.

This book, however, is different: no advice, no ready-made solutions. After all, there are many books, magazines and conferences that bring this ready to use. This book tries to mine the core nuggets which may regenerate a business advantage. By focusing on essential seeds, the postulate is that we can, not merely apply, but originate new concepts, new strategies and new behaviors; food for thought, that is. So, we may become conscious of our own thinking. When we start to be conscious of our thoughts in pursuing business (and, as a matter of fact, just anything), we become able to redraw our plans, change direction or invent whatever new ventures that seem advantageous. We head toward thought engineering.

About 10% of this book may be about the genes themselves. And 90% is just comments. Garbage, then? This may not be, as they constitute the instruction manual for activating the genes. The genes are the multi-dimensional embedded substances. They are frequencies. But, these need to be activated, hence the developments supplied. The same as in the DNA, 90% was dubbed “garbage” but seems to be a sort of instruction manual. The strange thing is that the 90% modify the perception – i.e. the understanding – of the 10%: they help us “program” our own way to activate the genes. The engine of transformation requires opening the larger part first.

But so far, very few companies have been able show us the artful way of thinking. We believe to have spotted one such example, hence our proposition to you, dear readers, to investigate how it has faced business. As things evolve, it may well be that what seemed extravagant or crazy a few years ago becomes the norm of the leaders. For this reason, should we not endeavor to analyze and synthesize the findings about such “wild ducks”?

Dear readers, we do not think that we have been carried away by Jobs’ singularities or as Apple maniacs. Our career spans several industries and companies and we have been accustomed to many environments for more than 70 years combined. Perhaps this makes us more vigilant about what carries more meaning and what may remain as background noise. This book tries to pull impersonal things inside out and reveal what may be hidden behind the visible side, not by disclosing unknown facts for the most part, but in translating the wisdom nuggets into transferable form. If we were to design a firm after Apple, would we have to go after yet another Jobs? Or, perhaps, could we mature some consistent knowledge to produce it?

Our future will be populated by vastly different objects, products or services, which we hardly can imagine as yet. Extrapolating from the present is a sure way to fail at some point in time. And we cannot limit our imagination to incremental changes only. What should guide us then? A target value, a divergent thinking, any innovative idea, etc.? Innovation is that odd art of altering the identity of objects. Hence, by opening new categories unsought before, whereby new identities (function and form intertwined into the object) are obtained by warping old ones to various degrees.

Our point is that no ordinary thinking could preside over no less ordinary things. We live in exciting times, in which products and business areas in general, are being reformulated or created. We believe this is just the beginning: there is no limit to the potential of creativity.

Bridging an Apple capacity for craziness and design innovation

This book aims to extract the “molecular genes” leading to craziness. For geniuses design crazy things, those things that nobody can a priori say are feasible, or are impossible. By crazy, we merely mean beyond immediate imagination. No market study is available here to reveal the possibility, for it would necessarily be based on past habits and usage. No viability proof exists yet, for nobody has done it, or even imagined it. And no master plan, roadmap of guidance can be obtained, for nobody has yet seen the path to a result.

We will bring in Leonardo Da Vinci, the Renaissance genius, for two reasons. First, always being fascinated by the Master, we have found over the years that his method of working has striking traits resembling those of Steve Jobs. Most probably not on the same personality or temper level, but rather in terms of the ways of performing.

Both had an unmatched gear for innovation, an intense search for perfection, and a special way of linking art and science.

Steve Jobs bringing in Jony Ive’s mind the obviousness of “Sunflower design” of the G4 iMac (or iLamp – see caption in Appendix 3) is no different in essence from Leonardo Da Vinci taking inspiration from design solutions (or design patterns, as computer people say) selected by Mother Nature into living organisms, through millions of years of continuous trial and error. To both of them, observing Nature is a privileged way to access to beauty, and superior, elegant and minimalist proven design solutions.

We provide background material on Leonardo’s way in Appendix 3 of this book. There is a second reason for calling Da Vinci to help understand Jobs, hence Apple. It is his unique way of designing radically novel concepts, actually quite crazy for his time. For elucidating his special creativity posture, we have to resort to a powerful design innovation method, which is actually backed by mathematical theory. It is called C-K (concepts–knowledge) theory.

A hallmark of the late Steve Jobs was a manifested capacity to cast objects revealing new usages (e.g. the iPod comfortably carrying a flock of songs). Or to irrevocably alter the identity of well-known objects (e.g. the colored plastic or aluminium casings of previously unattractive personal computing embodiments). To stand for, describe, and generalize such indomitable potential, we resolutely called for the authoritative design innovation theory from Mines ParisTech (the famous Ecole des Mines de Paris) called C-K (Appendix 4 provides an introduction). A real theory, backed by solid mathematical proof, already exists and is used that can account for the business virtue of a prolific ability to enter unknown crazy domains. We postulated that, by bringing the power of C-K to crack open a number of previous observations we made about Apple, it was possible to trace the genesis of the genes so that they would become transferable across the spectrum of the socioeconomic world. The effects reveal the causes. Genes are a measure of the entity at hand.

This book reveals some of the genetics that lead us to imagining and tackling undecidable things for business and economics.

Although we use a format that opposes that crazy thinking from the classical dominant thinking (and we deliberately use the illustrative example of the archetypal business school type for commodities), the genome that gets under way is no replacement for usual thinking. Nobody would advise us to directly use the genes as they usher in beyond the early adopter phase of an innovation adoption process. Some mature markets may prefer the comfort of conservatism, and this can be fine, as long as no disruptive innnovation pops up.

But at times when society is in need of radical adaptation and change for its sustainable pursuit, it is no less than the craziness ability that signs off fresh departures for promising horizons. The sustained art of the difference certainly opposes any complacency. And that formidable capability was chiefly found in Apple, to a yet unmatched degree. We are collectively lucky to witness an exemplar company teaching us the way of the reckless, the path to the fantastic or the gift of the magic. For the crazy way is now in strong demand, and the time has come to share and disseminate elements of that art of the difference.

This book amounts to no conduct guidelines. We remember the IBM Business Conduct Guidelines that we were given on the hiring day at this mythical company in the early 1980s well. Things to do, ways to behave, clear do’s and do nots. But here, we strive to build a new consciousness. A consciousness that makes you capable of activating new ways of thinking. It is not dual (do–do not), but anchored on ternary thinking. Figure 1 recalls the relationship between three basic concepts toward completing holistic and sustainable systems [MAS 15] and, beyond, sustaining consciousness itself.

How to use this book

The “technology tools” we provide in this book are meant for executives and strategists, from CEOs to team and project managers and the business practitioner in general.

You may use them in several ways; forging a new way of thinking yields different, better results for your company or projects. This can also regenerate companies. All of them were observed pertaining to the Apple of 1977–2011, when Steve Jobs was in charge and when he was not. By peeling off the layers of a firm’s shell (Figure 2) – thus gradually revealing inner conducts – we can get closer to what lies at its root. And in this root Apple’s DNA components are located.

Let us peel off the rings and journey through the layers. The surface layer includes the typical accounting figures, from cash reserves and material assets, as well as the visible side of the firm, its image and its way for getting close to the market. Typically, all components here are public, visible and recordable as imprints on some tangible matter.

The middle layer contains all direct experience and the flows that the firm entertains with its environment. Here lives its metabolism. Knowledge management may be used to explore the decision-making process related to this layer.

There have been few if no key studies on the actual content of the inner layer. We tend to resort to autobiographies, stories about established and other visionaries. Penetrating this layer would be the equivalent of an “introspection” for a human being, thereby raising the same conceptual and practical difficulties. However, here lie the keys to a firm’s evolution.

What if we had a tool, or a technology, which could X-ray the three layers? What if we could decode it and linearize its components? Perhaps, we could grasp the very fabric of a particular organization. In fact, the inner layer is the motor of the organization. Acting as a synthetic condenser (of the experiences of the middle layer) first, it squeezes out the lessons, leaving only what is essential. Yet, it retains a dual function, being capable of reproducing that quintessence toward the exterior. It then becomes a propulsion engine in case of need.

This core layer is assimilable to an energy formula and we will use numbered codes to classify them. Another code is the brand of the firm; it is another technology tool that should ideally cross all three layers in a coherent way. It should theoretically be capable of aligning the three layers along one unique outward-oriented axis with three stages: thinking —> action —> message. To express the value of the inner layer codes for Apple, we will use the market acronym of AAPL, signifying the relation between intrinsic stable power and external floating value and use the DNA segment metaphor for working at them.

To use the book, you may open it up at any page, pick a chapter and go through. Then, please meditate for a while on what excites you: that strangeness that seems to turn things upside down or inside out. For what seemed a peculiar oddness just yesterday may see the light of the day tomorrow morning.

The power is in the DNA

There is actually tremendous potential sitting in these DNA segments. As mentioned, they preciously store the inner fabric of a company: what has been learned the hard way and made a deep imprint not to be forgotten by anybody. All this ore constructs piecewise its core values, the firm’s nuggets. If and when reawaken properly (i.e. with a sound sense of timing, importance and urgency), they can regenerate the whole firm’s body: its middle layer organs and market. However, they are not an advisable cure for any incoming candidate enterprise as their power may clash with ambient cultures if they are not so well aligned.

These DNA tools will be a technology of our future. Perhaps, some researchers will someday find ways to synthesize firms and offer catalogued models of enterprises ready to analyze, classify and even run. As of today, however, we had better resort to and rely on certain people first, especially venture capitalists whose flair senses them well. Perhaps, world leading firms will someday get their DNA sequenced so as to make them more immune to their competitive environment. Or, they will prefer to safeguard their “molecular fabric” in the case of negative disruptions.

We believe that this is exactly what Steve Jobs wanted to do when he began to design Apple University, his in-house program for executives with the mandate to align Apple with the intangible values, ways of thinking, knowledge and other capacities that he regarded as his core legacy. He clearly saw, for instance, when he came back to power in 1995, that the rest of the company (the layers external to the core) was only contingent to the root layer. During his later years, he thus favored targeted case studies, valuable internal and external stories, those which could heartily imprint a lesson in the mind and the heart of the existing and yet to come executive staff. Moreover, are the heart and mind not the “inner layer” of a human being?

Of course, the question is “what do you put in the inner layer?” A genetic mapping is definitely not available today! This book can be viewed as an attempt to populate a “DNA component” which is part of the Apple’s inner layer.

We opted to evidence these in a dualistic framework. The reason is that we have had dualities for a long time in our cultures. Hence, we chose the concept of business school to antagonize the components found in an Apple’s DNA, respectively, to what a traditional business school long proposed. After all, business schools around the world also represent a dominant thinking of our times.

To be honest, we did meet some business schools that are beyond that reference cliché, and this shows that evolution is possible. But for the most part, we believe the perception of that dominant thinking still persists in the public. So, please see the intended orientation of the antagonism: to foster evolution. By sensing two antagonized extremes, the path will appear easier as it is made clearer. Will the business schools of the future endeavor to forgo some old schemes and bring forth the thinking that perspired through Apple’s history?

How did the authors come up with it?

Perhaps, the answer resides in having two unusual people confronting their own ideas.

For one, Patrick Corsi went to Silicon Valley the day after completing his PhD in computer science at Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble in France in 1979 to join the then mighty IBM Corp. At that time, mesmerizing trade winds were blowing out of a number of startups forges. And there was Apple blowing fire on your neck, just born out of a devil’s cauldron of two young rebels (one more than the other) and a peaceful senior executive who would not last too long. Patrick came back to Europe and joined IBM France a few years later, only to quit 3 years after: was IBM listening to the PC revolution or not quite? He directly embarked on a thorough, famed (and, yes, successful) startup venture in Paris in a then booming artificial intelligence called Cognitech SA.

He had to quit it again, not content with those who bought it out without a clear vision of what artificial intelligence was meant to be someday. After a short management career at Thomson, renamed Thales some time afterward, this is where he met his co-author. Sensing the European construction winds, he could only quit a third time and his co-author Dominique Morin happened to soon succeed him in the job, he joined the European Commission in Brussels.

And lo! A year later, his former successor himself jumped in too for a few years. Catch me if you can, Patrick quit the honorable Commission only a decade later, for not feeling enough of the hot breeze of exciting and singing tomorrows on his neck again. Standing close in spirit to Dominique, he often exchanged views about the lusty firms dominating the computing world. The fact is, in the meantime, a number of trials called Bill Gates himself to come to Brussels and seriously negotiate his Internet Explorer unbundling from an unavoidable Windows operating system.

By then, he began something you cannot quit too easily, an entrepreneurial life, and he started focusing on innovation processes, for all he saw before him spoke of it in one way or another. And he began to think about the art of thinking innovation. Not those cosmetic changes too often confused with innovation, but real breakthroughs, so radical that the common belief was to consider them as impossible until they appear. By focusing on what may be left when you peel off all outer rings of any substance matter, he began to notice a few interesting bits that seemed to remain mostly untold yet. He occasionally wrote on innovation and marketing, also on complexity and sustainability, to finally end up contributing to the present book, and (as a tribute to his Italian origins), thereby prone to connecting the “Leonardo Da Vinci” hyper dot to the “Steve Jobs” hyper dot, in the universe of multi-dimensional creativity.

Dominique Morin started his working life in 1977 and terminated it in 2015. He, therefore, belongs to a generation that had the privilege of being witness to Apple’s story, from Steve Jobs’ parents’ garage to becoming the most famous company in the world.

His relationship with Apple has been limited to that of a distant (but attentive) observer, and occasional customer, yet that has been enough to give him, throughout these years, the living experience of its entire rich and complex product history, to date.

Graduating from Ecole Centrale Paris (EC 77), in 1977, Dominique Morin had a varied career in the computing world and consulting. He crossed the lines between very small and very large enterprises, from public agency to private business, via the associative world.

He finally settled in aeronautics in the Safran Group by working on the development of embarked critical software, its certification and ultimately the so-called “airworthiness” function, which deals with the demonstration of flight capacity, according to applicable safety regulations. His professional path twice crossed Patrick’s, and together they brought to their twinned consciousness a new understanding of things from the side you do not see.

He spends an unreasonable amount of time on various discussion forums dedicated to Apple and is convinced that Apple will have a profound influence on how to approach business issues, which will be documented in many books to come.

One final note: he is an ardent admirer of Frank Zappa too (www.umrk.fr)!

This book is a piecewise contribution, based on our complementary professional experiences. We hope you will have as much fun reading it as we had writing it.

How is the book structured?

The book first provides a series of genes (the so-called “first helix”) in three parts: 22 major genes drawn from the business successes (Part 1), four genes drawn from historical failures (Part 2) and a complementary managerial gene (in Part 3). Part 3 then builds the “second helix” by interpreting a number of the major genes into a knowledge base ready for implementation at various companies and organizations.

Part 1 is purely linear thinking: it scans the business space: typical business domains of interest and genes from observable or common knowledge, history and analysis. This is an analysis method that we are all accustomed with and which resorts to customary Cartesian problem solving. This is our comfort zone, we wish to expect a stepwise process sequencing the possibilities at hand to choose from, with a user manual that tells us how to proceed. Since a linear thinker wants a list of after all, when sequencing DNA, we start by flattening out its components. Whenever tackling a complicated issue, we try to decompose it into simpler elements, and break down each of them. The results reflect the components and the sum total of them is assumed to cover the whole initial issue at hand, in our case Apple’s DNA content.

In Part 2, we focus on Apple’s blatant old failures, showing that they are at the root of its most recent tremendous success. The chronological sequence of failures scans the dimension of time.

From Part 1 and Part 2, a new layer will be built from which to evolve the genes: these cannot be taken as static fixtures.

Hence, Part 3 offers a rather unusual attempt at decoding a firm’s DNA. It seeks to activate genes in relation to each other. It builds a new energy. New capacities may emerge that are inscribed in a nonlinear way, not only confounding the past and present, but also modifying the acquired past by building new ones. In doing so, we needed special armory: the power of two special design methodologies. These delinearize the previous findings and provide an access path to anything that is so uncovered. The DNA becomes a springboard for a firm’s future.

One is dedicated to the design of breakthrough innovations and has a unique forcing ability to forge wished properties. It bears the unique capacity to obtain wished results. In other words, it can be applied to transfer the previously found genes into new business realms. The other supports the latter by bringing up a ternary thinking. It will help us to escape from dualistic thinking and is applied to systematizing the ternary thinking for three arguments at the heart of any business:

Part 3 innovates in business thinking by offering an integrated approach to issues. A fitting parallel between Steve Jobs and Leonardo Da Vinci backs our approach and shows how such geniuses depart from the prevalent linear thinking which humanity has been accustomed to so far. Stunning innovation role models illustrate the main stance of this book: the gap with a traditional business thinking, exacerbated by classical business schools. We can say that the way Apple is thinking and operating surely prefigures future thinking and operating ways for a new generation of firms for the coming decades. Will technology blend with art, science with devices and consciousness with action? Will Apple be seen someday soon as the tip of this coming revolution? This is arguable, as Steve Jobs has made decisive breaches in his way of considering computing, devices, design, technology, usage, and, above all, life, that the meaning of these breaches can only be understood when more mature development phases will come of age.

To support Part 3 with the underpinning and methodological rationale, a number of appendices are provided, each bringing in a particular generic tooling apparatus.

This translation is necessary for designing new capacities, and therefore imports those genes into target organizations. It serves as a methodological platform for constructing new cultures.

Several appendices complement the reading and provide, among other additions, the full list of the genes found, a backgrounder for harnessing more genes as time goes on, as well as a comprehensive bibliographical reference.

“If you want to do something new, do it.”

John Lennon