Simply put, a new Apple product triggers in its customers:

• Excitement – this is the “Wow! Can you believe this!!” experience of an adrenaline rush
• Delight – this is the “Unbelievably cool!” experience of a dopamine burst
• Enjoyment – this is the “I just love this!” experience of endorphin flow
• Satisfaction – this is the “Look at the ease vs. frustration of doing so many things; I feel like the master of my universe” experience of elevated serotonin
• Bonded – this is the “Crazy or not, I feel attached to my Apple product and would be lost without it” experience of oxytocin connectedness

In essence Apple products bathe your nervous system with a gift that keeps on giving.

Why should any of this matter?

1. because when most people think of their day to day life, especially in these difficult, insecure times, few experience excitement, delight, enjoyment, satisfaction or deep connectedness to either a significant or lasting degree
2. because the crash off any of these experiences, especially off an adrenaline rush can be so upsetting, frustrating and painful that we will rush back to grab another toke from the Apple drug to avoid it
3. because if your product or service instead of producing the above reactions produces the opposite, i.e. Boredom instead of Excitement, Disappointment instead of Delight, Frustration instead of Enjoyment, Regret instead of Satisfaction, Disconnection vs. Connection, they will experience less of the above neurochemicals and hormones and it will widen the Mirror Neuron Gap (explanation further down).

What Apple (and facebook, Starbucks and Zappos) know and execute on is that customers are compelled much more by an experience than a result. Why is that important? Because when you experience something you feel alive; when you achieve a result, you have a momentary feeling of excitement, but then you’re off to seeking the next result (that is why pure adrenaline junkies who only know excitement or restless boredom are usually not very happy, satisfied or fulfilled).

Years ago, I did a workshop at a PromaxBDA convention that was high tech except for my standing room only no-tech presentation to more than 250 attendees on “Creating Gotta See It!”  PromaxBDA in the international association for entertainment professionals who are responsible for the trailers, ads, opening tv and movie sequence all designed to compel you to want to see more or what I referred to as “Gotta’ See It!”  This is the same experience behind, “Gotta Have It!” “Gotta Buy It!” “Gotta Tell Others About It.” Contrast that with the opposite reactions such as “Never mind,” “Nah, don’t think so,” “Pass” or “Yuck!”

The single hand out from that presentation is below.  In essence what it means is that every customer who has the internal experience on the left wants a product or service to transport them to the experience on the right.  In the example of a promo or trailer or title sequence, all of these should offer a viewer the promise of being transported from an experience on the left to the one on the right if they see the tv show or movie.  The same is true regarding your product or service.

That is what is referred to as the mirror neuron system.  Mirror neurons are a part of the brain that cause us to mirror what we see others doing and to even feel what they are feeling.  It is the part of our brain that causes us to yawn or smile when other people do it.  It is thought to be the area associated with imitation, learning and empathy and when not functioning is thought to be involved in autism and Asperger’s Syndrome.

The relevance of this is that when we mirror, care or conform to the needs of the world it builds up in us a reciprocal desire and even deep hunger to be mirrored in return.  I refer to this as a Mirror Neuron Gap (explained more fully in my book, “Just Listen” Discover the Secret to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone  which explains how deep and empathic listening narrows that gap and enables you to get through to anyone).

So if and when we are mirroring/conforming/catering to the emotional needs of others we unconsciously want others or the world to do the same in return.

If in our mirroring the world, we enable it and other people to feel excited/adrenaline rush, delighted/dopamine burst, enjoyment/endorphin flow, satisfaction/elevated serotonin, bonded/oxytocin connectedness at our expense, we are going to be very hungry for something that mirrors us and gives us back those experiences.

That is what Apple products do.

That is of course the question on the mind of Apple’s shareholders, employees and to a lesser extent its customers and clients (who will jump to a Droid or Google, if and when they create products that excite and service them as well as Apple products).

Despite protestations and reassurances from Jobs and Apple COO, Tim Cook, and despite their not just weathering, but thriving during Jobs-less times, an Apple without Jobs makes many nervous to their core.

If we were to think of Jobs not as a unique and irreproducible person, but as a mindset, skill set and capacity that could be deconstructed and then modeled, not only could Apple continue its amazing growth, but other companies might follow suit.

Much has been written about Jobs trying to figure out his “secret sauce” so that others might use it to propel their companies and careers to extraordinary outcomes.

When the two of us have read about him, several things stick out:

1. Dropped out of Reed College: It would be one thing to drop out of a Stanford or even a UC Berkeley for being too constricting to one’s personality, but to drop out of a counter culture college like Reed meant Jobs danced to a different drum that was one standard deviation beyond others who danced to a different drum. To reference Malcolm Gladwell Jobs was and has always been a dyed in the wool “Outlier.”

2. Calligraphy: Calligraphy is one of the best examples of form over function, executed with precision. The beauty and style of it is all about how it looks as opposed to what it says. To produce such beauty, one needs to be incredibly precise in their skill. It’s possible that by immersing himself in learning calligraphy, that not just the combination, but the synergy between beauty + style + precision, became an indelible part of Jobs’ personality.

3. Psychedelics and LSD: I have heard from many people who used psychedelics and LSD, but did not succumb to them, that drugs did not make them crazy. Instead, they have told me that they felt crazy before they took drugs and taking them somehow helped them to make sense of the world (anyone who has smoked pot will attest that whether it’s an illusion or not, they do experience a deepened appreciation of music, food, movies, sex and sometimes even the universe–but don’t ask me, because “I didn’t inhale”).

4. Trip to India, return as Buddhist: One of the central tenets of Buddhism is to replace “making things happen” with “letting things happen.” And that by “letting things happen” not only does your fear of going out of control (by giving up control) not happen, but you experience breakthroughs you never would have realized if you fought to stay in control at all times.

5. Atari: When Jobs came back and worked at Atari and partnered with Steve Wozniak, he possibly appreciated the importance of precision and leanness as Wozniak discovered how to eliminate the number of chips on the circuit board of Atari’s game, Breakout, with both of them splitting the $700 prize for the invention.

6. Apple under Sculley: When it was discovered that Apple needed better controls and operational efficiency and that Jobs was too erratic and in the way of it, Pepsi Co’s John Sculley came in and added those. However during his tenure, Apple lost its heart and soul as a creative and innovative company.

7. Return to Apple: When Jobs came back to Apple to revive its creative, innovative core, he was probably wiser, more circumspect, but no less brash and charismatic.

Taking into consideration the above and to figure out the world according to Steve Jobs, we will now take huge swaths of poetic license and chutzpah (hopefully something Jobs would appreciate) to explain Steve Jobs according to us.

As mentioned above we think Jobs’ mindset + skillset + capacity is built upon the synergy of beauty + style + precision that is close to the core and the most generative part of his personality. Synergy is different than a mere combination or even collaboration between elements. It’s exponentially greater than the sum of its parts. It also requires being comfortable in the “interstices” and in this instance, between beauty, form and precision and trusting and believing that when those sub-functions seem most disconnected from each other, if you just “let it be” (to quote the Beatles) they will come back together in a new and better configuration).

What differentiates Jobs from many is that most of the world lives and functions in silos, defends them and resists anything that tries to pull them out of them. Thus people who live in the form silo resist pressure from the function (and certainly the analytic) silo to focus on numbers vs. the emotional experience so important to style. And people in the function silo resist pressure from the form silo to lighten and loosen up and just “get a life.” Such adjacent silos too often interact from a “zero sum game” mindset.

Synergy transcends that transactional stalemate and Jobs fuels that synergy by being able to see into Apple’s customers’ future to products overflowing with beauty, style, precision and functionality beyond what they can imagine. One of the reasons he can do that is that he is not constricted by living in a single silo, but flows naturally between them. By nature Jobs has been a seeker most of his life who has honed his gift of being able to go from divergent, expansive thinking to convergent, focused doing into a deftly effective skill.

Years ago a native from a primitive tribe came to Manhattan and was asked what he thought. His response was: “They don’t see the sky.” That could be applied to any company where competing functions and departments are so concerned with turf erosion and so protective with CYA survival strategies that they can never see beyond either and into their customers’ futures and beyond.

Apple has succeeded under Jobs, because he can see the sky. Using the model above, you might be able to as well.

In the current financial pogrom of the middle class, there seems to be one special island left standing in a shopping center near you. And that appears to be Apple Computer and its Apple Store. If you don’t believe that, check out their stock performance and visit an Apple Store. There doesn’t seem to be a shortage of people willing to spend their money there. Contrast that with the veritable “ghost towns” of stores adjacent or directly across from that Apple Store.

What is their formula that the rest of us can follow to get people to spend money, that will create a need for more products, services and employees, and that more importantly will solve the unemployment crisis?

It’s rather simple and hidden in plain sight. Find out what the very moneyed and somewhat moneyed “gotta have” and then give it to them. In the case of Apple, it seems that the moneyed and somewhat moneyed gotta have Apple products including ipads, iphones and even Macbook computers (in spite of their costing four to five times their PC counterparts).

The other thing that Apple got right is aspirational clarity which means seeing what their customers are likely to “gotta have” in their customers’ future that their customers can’t see now.

Apple is not alone in this. Successful movie franchises like Harry Potter, Batman and Spiderman seem to also have aspirational clarity.

So here is the simple solution for job creation. Every business needs to get out of their own mindset and into the aspirational mindsets of their customers and clients and create services and products that are beyond their customers’ imagination, but will be what they “gotta have” in the future.

Years ago the iconic movie, Field of Dreams did just that. When Ray Kinsella, the character played by Kevin Costner, created a field in which people got to live out their dreams, it fulfilled the promise of that movie. “If you build it, people will come.”

And that is one way to solve the unemployment problem.

Also:
What Apple and Facebook Know That You Don’t
Want to Be Just Like Steve Jobs?

Here’s the challenge.  Can Larry Page’s coming back do for Google what Steve Jobs coming back did for Apple? So far, not so good.

Media shy Page delivered 370 words in his first quarter earnings report and although earnings were up 18 % over last year, analysts hunger to hear more contributed to a 5.4 % stock plunge on Thursday.

What does Google and more specifically Larry Page need to turn things around?  Page came back ostensibly to add some “outside of the box” visioning/strategizing to replace Eric Schmidt’s (who was the second coming of John Sculley during Apple’s history) being too much inside the box.

Page may need to take a page from Mr. Jobs personality especially the part of him that is not hesitant to be a visionary a-hole, if that is what it takes to get the job done.

A visionary a-hole in Jobs case is someone who is so clear about what he and Apple want to be, that they are able to tune out, disregard and even scoff at all the short term people (aka Wall Street transactionally myopic, “show me the money” types) who consistently pressure any public CEO with, “What are you going to do?” questions.  In other words, Jobs has been able to keep Apple on an aspirational and contagious “what do you want to be?” path and not become distracted or deterred by the money and non-value driven world demanding of them, “what are you going to do next?”

Page may not be enough of an a-hole to keep his focus on “what do you (and Google) want to be?” and resist all the “what are you going to do?” questions and demands that when not satisfied will punish you like they did Page and Google yesterday.

To do that Page needs to surround himself by a few PALs.  PAL stands for Purposeful Agendaless Listening.  Purposeful Agendaless Listening is about the people in your braintrust believing in you and listening in a way that enables you to think aloud and clarify your thinking and in Page’s case crystallize it into a disruptive vision that compels and sells.

Years ago one of the most respected psychoanalysts of the last century, Wilfred Bion, said: “the purest form of listening is to listen without memory or desire.”  By that he meant that when you listen to someone with memory you have an old agenda you’re trying to plug them into (as in, “Hey Larry what are you going to do about the mess Google is in?”).  And when you listen with desire you have a new agenda that you’re trying to plug them into (as in, “Hey Larry, so what’s your new business vision that will turn the stock price around and don’t insult us with a mere 370 words?”).  In either case you are not listening to that person’s agenda.

If I were Larry Page and not able to muster up my inner a-hole, I would have problems tuning out all the people with agendas for me.  What I would need is a few PALs who could listen in a purposeful but agendaless way and be in a dialogue with me to help me think aloud and clarify a vision for what I and Google want to be and not be inhibited and derailed by all the agendadriven “what are you going to do?” short term thinkers on Wall Street and beyond.

Other resources:

• What Apple and Facebook know that YOU don’t
• Want to be just like Steve Jobs?

On a recent blog, The Innovation Checklist, we talked about the need for an innovation to trigger “Whoa!” “Wow!” “Hmmm…” “Let’s Go!” in its market. That was largely aimed at customers and clients. In this blog, for an innovation to succeed, we will discuss how it needs to do the same for the people inside your company responsible for producing it and persevering through all the unavoidable setbacks that threaten to derail it.

To achieve that result from your people, it is also important that your innovation meet the PEP CEO challenge. One of the main roles of any CEO or Director of a project is to have a crystal clear vision of the desired outcome which must trigger “Whoa!” “Wow!” “Hmmm…” “Let’s Go!” in its customers, clients and/or end users. However in addition to that, the CEO must do whatever it takes to create and sustain Passion, Enthusiasm and Passion in the internal people who will be responsible for the innovation.

Passion = The feeling of passion for the breakthrough vision that an innovation will achieve. Think how Apple’s iPad (and subsequent pads from competitors) may replace the laptop computer and/or how cloud computing may replace needing to have anything on your pad or laptop computers. For me, my personal passion is that every soldier and veteran (the all who gave some and the families of the some who gave all) who has put themselves in harm’s way so that people like my children and me (neither of us who have served in the military) will get their chance for a full life through a transition program co-created by my partners, Lt. General Marty Steele (USMC retired) and Colonel Tom Tyrrell (USMC retired) at Steele Partners and if they are too injured or traumatized, get proper health care and dignity (I actually apologized to the military on CNN for my psychiatric profession sometimes treating them with less than the dignity they deserved).

Enthusiasm = The feeling about the mission to fulfill that vision being effectively and efficiently executed. When instead of that happening, you have people finger pointing, excuse making and complaining and interacting like the Keystone Cops, your enthusiasm for even the noblest of visions and missions can rapidly wane. Apple has executed their mission to create breakthrough products that create “Whoa!” “Wow!” “Hmmm…” “Let’s Go!” nearly flawlessly. For me, it is that the transition program designed by Lt. General Steele that was already successful during 2006 – 2008 (and it is close to being approved as a “go to” program to be redeployed to “keep our promise,” as Commandant General Amos has said, to returning soldiers).

Pride = This has to do with the people around you inside the company you work. When you are surrounded by people with whom it is an honor and privilege to carry out a mission to fulfill a vision, there are few things that will fill you with such pride. Go to any Apple store and you will see it in the people there to serve you. They love Apple, like each other and love being of service to anxious, technology challenged people like me. As for me, with my partners at Steele Partners (where I serve as Vice Chairman), Chairman Lt. General Marty Steele, CEO Colonel Tom Tyrrell and COO Keith Minella, I have hit the honor, integrity, loyalty, higher purpose lottery (and am even tearing up as I write these words thinking of my good fortune).

The reason I call the above the PEP CEO Challenge is that every CEO should pose the following to their people and when possible their customers and clients:

“When you are at a conference, networking event and/or cocktail party and someone else demonstrates a 10-10-10 level (where 10 = very high and 1 = very low) of Passion, Enthusiasm and Pride (PEP) about their company, products, service and/or vision and you don’t feel the same about our company, you (and certainly I) would feel envious. What would you rate your level of PEP when you talk about our company, products, service and/or vision? If it is anything less than 10-10-10 please send me anonymously your suggestions on what we would need to do to get it there.”

Other resources:

* The Innovation Checklist – “Don’t leave R & D without it”
* What Apple and Facebook Know that YOU Don’t

Seeking New Visionary CEO with the Following Attributes:

1. Able to see into the future beyond the imagination of customers of what will delight, excite and addict them, that they can’t even conceive.  It’s the ability to know what will provide lasting delight vs. immediate gratification.  Often what causes that is when function is wrapped in beauty.
2. Clarity of vision able to leap tall silos fueled by the courage of his convictions.  Silos only see the sky of what they can produce, they don’t see the sky over an enterprise of what could be.  JFK looked beyond satellites and saw the Moon as a possibility and that spontaneously caused all silos to fall when the possibility of being part of the adventure of a life time presented itself.
3. Undeterred by “should’s” “shouldn’ts” “yes, buts” and “that’s impossibles.” Needs to show a prolonged (vs. “one trick pony) track record of having good instincts that when translated into products and services, produce exceptional results.
4. Chutzpah and brazenness informed by vision vs. ego.  It’s not about having to be right, but knowing what’s right, seeing it clearly and not resting until it is realized.  Although Mark is a writer, consultant, coach, speaker, yadda, yadda, yadda, his singular passion is repaying the sacrifice of all the soldiers who gave some and of the families of soldiers killed in action who gave all so that you, your children and his children and he can enjoy freedom which is why he became Vice Chairman at Steele Partners along with his former senior Marine officer partners whose heart and soul is a previously successfully deployed transition program for returning military (know anyone who can write them a check?).
5. Does not suffer from visionary myopia.  Instead of a singular focus on fulfilling a vision that delights consumers, extends that focus to identifying other people who are also visionaries to carry on that process of bringing visions to life as opposed to missionaries who may become confused after the initial visionary leaves. This is unfortunately Apple’s core dilemma.

Will settle for interim:

In all likelihood, Apple will not find someone to immediately fill Steve Jobs’ shoes, either in mindset, skill set, but most importantly in his clarity of vision and his brazen “not to be deterred” commitment to fulfilling it.

In all likelihood whoever they find will pale and fail in comparison to Jobs.

One alternative is to hire an interim CEO who instead of failing, will allow the world to adjust to an Apple without Jobs.   This will allow people to calm down and be more open to seeing and more able to see a permanent CEO for their distinct and special and different-but equal-to-Jobs talents as opposed to comparing them to Jobs on a daily basis which is what his immediate successor will face.

• 10 Signs Your CEO Sucks at Succession
• Want to Be Just Like Steve Jobs?
• What Apple and Facebook Know that YOU Don’t
• This Week in Startups (VIDEO)

• Steve Jobs innovates
• John Kao teaches innovation
• Arianna Huffington is Paul Revere telling us we’d better start innovating (because the Indians and Chinese are not coming and in fact are leaving to build companies in their countries)
  

Here is the Google definition of Innovation:

• innovation /’ɪnəv’eɪʃən/
  Synonyms:

  • noun: novelty, newness
  • innovations plural
  • An innovation is a new thing or a new method of doing something. N-COUNT
    • The vegetarian burger was an innovation which was rapidly exported to Britain.
    • …the transformation wrought by the technological innovations of the industrial age.
  • Innovation is the introduction of new ideas, methods, or things. N-UNCOUNT
    • We must promote originality and encourage innovation.

When I think of the word INNOVATION I think of something else.  I think of IN + OVATION.  To me it means that idea, method or thing which spontaneous causes the end user to inwardly feel a sense of wonder, awe or just WOW and to internally applaud it (i.e. ovation). It’s longer lasting than excitement or immediate gratification.  The iPod and Avatar have it and the iPad may have it.

It also brings together multiple expansive and divergent experiences into a convergent WOW.  Imax and some animated 3-D seemed to be getting some traction; Avatar hit it out of the park and may be the “tipping point” for 3-D television.  The Kindle gave people a taste of turning away from a book they could hold in their hands to something that could store hundreds of books.  As the newspaper and magazine industry appears to be in a shambles, the iPad might be the vehicle for reading that content complete with mastheads that look very much like the actual newspaper of magazine.

If 3-D televison and teleconferencing via telecommunication vehicles such as skype and GoToMeeting or even Cisco’s Telepresence continue to blossom and if traveling continues to be a hassle, I am guessing that one of the next innovations would be an iPad application/technology that enables you to make a video telephone call in 3D.  That would come as close to recreating the actual experience of being with someone as actually being there.

One of the things common to the most enthusiastically embraced innovations is that they “Create Gotta See It, Have It, Buy It, Do It” followed by a continued “Wanna See It, Have It, Buy It, Do It.”

One of the best ways to discover what WOWS your end user is to “Just Listen” (check out the humblingly enthusiastic reader reviews of my book to get a taste of those reactions).

I recently appeared on This Week in Startups hosted by Jason Calacanis and we covered a lot of topics that several viewers wanted to hear more about.  One of those was the difference between an opportunist and a visionary.

An opportunist* by nature sees something that is already out there, and then focuses on a way to ruthlessly beat the competition, create barriers to entry and race ahead.  That head start can give an opportunist a short runway advantage over the competition, but there’s no guarantee that others won’t find a way to catch up and beat them.  Microsoft was opportunistic when it jumped out with Windows to lift sole proprietor status of the user friendly interface from Apple’s first Macintosh.  It did the same again with Microsoft Office which quickly became the 800 pound gorilla, outmaneuvering WordStar and WordPerfect for market share dominance.  But Google beat the crap out of Internet Explorer not to mention Yahoo as far as the search market is concerned.

Opportunists are about extending a grasp in an already competitive environment.  They are about being grabby.

A visionary by nature is about seeing something that doesn’t exist.  It’s not about extending human grasp and outgrabbing the competition; it’s about extending human experience and going beyond the imagination.  Walt Disney was a visionary because he extended the human experience from what his wife referred to as a “dirty” amusement park into not just a “theme park” but “The Happiest Place on Earth.”

“When I started on Disneyland, my wife used to say, ‘But why do you want to build an amusement park? They’re so dirty.’ I told her that was just the point–mine wouldn’t be. Disneyland would be a world of Americans, past and present, seen through the eyes of my imagination–a place of warmth and nostalgia, of illusion and color and delight.” – Walt Disney

From a practical standpoint, one of the other advantages of a vision over an opportunity is that it extends your runway, because you are so far beyond everyone else.  That may explain why Apple so fiercely guards the opening presentations of its visionary products.  When they are finally revealed, it is so clear how they have outdistanced the competition that many would be competitors don’t even bother trying.  Think of how the iphone has done just that to the competition and how unreliable and unsatisfying its competitors’ products have been (such as the Blackberry Storm).

One of the problems with a number of founders and entrepreneurs that I discussed with Jason is that many of them are the first to seize an opportunity (a la Microsoft) and are hailed by the world as visionaries, but then turn out to be “one trick pony” opportunists.

With some deep listening and a little prodding, such founders and entreprenuers have often revealed their paranoid fears to me of being exposed as an opportunist/one trick pony in visionary/successful businessman’s clothing.  The more anxious they become that they can’t repeat that first success, the more often they become hostile, difficult to work with, “terrors” at work and then are barely able to contain their anxiety out in the investment world where they’re trying to court new capital.

What’s fascinating is that once they share this all too common fear, they exhale – physically, psychologically and emotionally.  It is as if a huge monkey is lifted off their backs.  It is also as if their minds were overloaded modems that have been disconnected, powered down, rested, powered up and then rebooted.  Suddenly they have new bandwidth and begin to see other possibilities and they start visualizing.  They also realize that even if they were the original visionary or opportunist or whatever, they don’t have to be the sole visionary anymore.

Jason Calacanis spoke about this in our interview when he explained how visions can be culled from all kinds of places by just listening and observing and having your people listen and observe what’s out there in the market place and what’s really on your customers and clients’ minds and in their hearts, their deepest fears, their greatest dreams and beyond their imagination.

* I have been appropriately called to task by my good friend, astute coach and NPR host, Marty Nemko, for bad mouthing the many entrepreneurs who have made this country great as “grabby” and opportunistic. I love entrepreneurs.  My fellow psychiatrists see me as an entrepreneur. I don’t have an issue with the true entrepreneurs who see themselves as entrepreneurs.  The people I have issue with are those entrepreneurs who are seen as visionaries when they really aren’t, and like that moniker.  It’s as if they are much smarter than they are bright and want the world to think of them as brighter than they really are.  (And many of them think of themselves as smart, when in reality they were luckier than smart) Then they begin to act badly out of the fear of being exposed as merely smart rather than bright.

Books, Upcoming events and other resources of note:

A just posted video for you to consider and discuss with your teams on: “Two Question to Delegate Better and Hold People Accountable.”

Just out: Your Brain at Work by David Rock. “This is the best, the most helpful, and the brainiest book I’ve read on how the brain affects how, why and what we do and act. After reading only the first four chapters, I felt roughly 100% more efficient in organizing my work and personal life.” – Warren Bennis, Distinguished Professor of Business and University Professor, University of Southern California and author of “On Becoming a Leader.

And be sure to check out: Business Relationships that Last by Ed Wallace. “In Business Relationships That Last, Ed Wallace captures the immediate need for organizations and individuals to build relationships of integrity and confidence. That trust benefits every aspect of service and will help grow your business and generate superior performance.” —Stephen M. R. Covey, author of the New York Times bestseller The Speed of Trust

November 3rd , 2009 at 1:00pm EST / 10:00am PST: Leading News free webcast: “Executive Transitions: What Senior Leaders Need to Know and Do” featuring Executive Coach Patricia Wheeler, moderated by Larry Levin.  Patricia is one of the clearest communicators I have ever met.

Microsoft saw the opportunity to create Windows, then Office, then Internet Explorer, all of which were helpful to PC users.

But being helpful didn’t and doesn’t hold a candle to Apple’s vision of continually delighting its customers. They realized that the generation that was drawn to new technology not only were “delight” (and adrenaline) junkies, they had the attention span of a gnat and hate to be bored. Being helped to be productive is boring compared to being delighted.

And what about Google? It might outlast both Microsoft and Apple (especially upon the sad “demise” of its delight guru – we all do wish you good health Steve), because it has found a way to combine helpfulness in services, ease of use (just “google” me), and flirts with some pretty delightful applications and extensions (it ain’t no iPOD, but it ain’t as boring as Microsoft’s offerings).

There is a parallel to the world of politics. President Obama seized the opportunity to create a country that was “All about WE” instead of “All about ME,” but he, too, must find a vision if he is to maintain his attraction and traction.

A final caveat regarding those who can neither see or seize an opportunity or see a vision…People who can’t take advantage of opportunity, take advantage of people.

If you want to see a quick talk on a vision of how to create a “WE,” check out: How to Break Down Silos.