Jony Ive, Harold Ramis, copycats, and creative wisdom

I recently read that Apple’s lead designer, Jony Ive, was quoted about his disdain for copycats, calling them lazy, and their actions, theft. Elsewhere, I read of plans to remake Harold Ramis’ classic 1984 comedy Ghostbusters.

This got me to thinking that even as the products, services, and ideas we produce are later copied by weaker minds and less innovative companies, the original remains. The original contributes something that copies can never match; that is, the creative viewpoint of the originator.

Jony Ive’s creative contributions are widely recognized, and many of us benefit from his product design - and in fact will soon be reminded of these contributions every time we glance at out forthcoming AppleWatch. And when the writer and director of Ghostbusters, Harold Ramis, died earlier this year, he left behind not only an impressive body of creative work (including Animal House, Caddyshack, and Groundhog Day) but like Ive, also many wise, quotable insights about the creative process. The quotes from Ive and Ramis below are just a few that are applicable not only to creative professionals, but to those in nearly every line of work. Here are just a few nuggets of wisdom that Ive and Ramis have shared:

• "A psychologist said to me, there are only two important questions you have to ask yourself. 'What do you really feel?' And, 'what do you really want?' If you can answer those two, you probably can leave your neuroses behind you." (Ramis)
• "I think if you do something and it turns out pretty good, then you should go do something else wonderful, not dwell on it for too long. Just figure out what's next." (Ive)
• "My characters aren't losers. They're rebels. They win by their refusal to play by everyone else's rules." (Ramis)
• "‘Different' and 'new' is relatively easy. Doing something that's genuinely ‘better’ is very hard." (Ive)
• "The cutting room is where you discover the optimal length of the movie." (Ramis)
• "True simplicity is, well, you just keep on going and going until you get to the point where you go, 'Yeah, well, of course.' Where there's no rational alternative." (Ive)
• "First and foremost, you have to make the movie for yourself. And that's not to say, to hell with everyone else, but what else have you got to go on but your own taste and judgment?" (Ramis)
• "What I love about the creative process, and this may sound naive, but it is this idea that one day there is no idea, and no solution, but the next day there is an idea. I find that incredibly exciting and conceptually actually remarkable." (Ive)
• "Nothing reinforces a professional relationship more than enjoying success with someone." (Ramis)

The adage that imitation is the highest form of flattery is of little comfort when faced with copy cats, second rate knock-offs, and credit-stealers. Still, while it is nearly impossible to try to stop others’ imitations of your unique ideas, perhaps that is not what is important. Your contribution should be more than the sum of the patents, productivity, and profits you delivered.  It is perhaps more helpful to remember that the true innovator has not only have contributed great ideas to the world, but like Ramis, Ive, and many others before them, have contributed the wisdom that only their unique perspective can create. 

When did the guys from Delta House start running Microsoft?

"Fat, dumb, and stupid is no way to go through life, son."

These immortal words, uttered by Dean Wormer in the classic Animal House, could be applied collectively to many companies today. Many come to mind, the most obvious is Microsoft, where last year in the rush to get a new product launched, it wasn't so much 'fat, dumb and stupid' so much as 'hubris, avarice, and... okay, stupidity'. It isn’t often easy to distinguish between those three. Too often, all are a part of a lousy decision, and the launch of Vista illustrates all three.

Twelve months following the launch of the Vista operating system there remains a significant reluctance among consumers and enterprises to ‘upgrade’ to the new operating system. Heads in the sand, Redmond executives are quick to suggest that price alone is a deterrent to sales. Yet anyone who knows anyone who has used the operating system likely knows one or more of the dozens of horror stories associated with Vista. In short, the stories caught fire and the Vista brand now precedes itself. No amount of new pricing strategies will change that.

In recent court documents stemming from a class action lawsuit, it is discovered that even Microsoft’s own executives were victims of Vista, either through a lack of drivers for peripherals, certification of underpowered hardware, or a host of other issues common to all Vista users… the executive types from Redmond voiced their frustrations in revealing internal emails obtained by the court.

The reason for the failure of Vista is, as stated above, actually three-fold: hubris, avarice, and stupidity. According to a recent article in the New York Times, all three were in play in Redmond at the time before, during and after the launch.
Hubris:
In the run-up to launch, Microsoft lowered the requirements for hardware, changing required wording on the ubiquitous sticker from “Vista Ready” to “Vista Capable”. (The latter is actually on the notebook on which this is being typed. I run XP, as after having deloused a neighbor’s Vista machine, I elected to stay with what I know).

Avarice:
Internal documents obtained through the legal action reveal that the decision to dumb-down the hardware specifications faces even internal protest in Redmond, including, according to the Times article, Anantha Kancherla, who as a Microsoft program manager was in a position to know that the configuration was so minimal that “even a piece of junk will qualify.”

Stupidity:
Anticipating customer revolt after the hardware requirements were compromised, Microsoft’s own staff prepared for the certain complaints in internal discussions, including a comment from a Microsoft sales manager who wisely – and obviously – wrote, “It would be a lot less costly to do the right thing for the customer now, than to spend dollars on the back end trying to fix the problem.”

It’s too late for Vista, and my humble prediction is that it will go away and undergo a retooling - perhaps a later integration of key features into a different OS release. (There is precedent for a failed OS... anyone running ‘Windows Me’? Didn’t think so.) As for Microsoft, to borrow another Animal House reference, they are now on "double secret probation" with the marketplace. Microsoft needs to be schooled in the threat posed by its competitors – not the least of which include Google, and of course, open source. The days when consumers would accept whatever Redmond dished out are past . Vista is just a symptom of the whole of the Microsoft brand.

To paraphrase Deam Wormer, “Hubris, avarice, and stupidity are no way to run a company, son.”