Presentation Zen: Steve Jobs & the art of focus

Simplicity, among other things, is a conscious choice between inclusion and exclusion. Often the magic is in what you leave out. But this means that you need to be comfortable with saying no, to yourself and to others. This is not easy to do. In the two video clips below from 1997, Steve Jobs shares his ideas on simplicity and focus while speaking to the issue of killing OpenDoc (a software framework standard), a decision that was not popular for many people at the time. Jobs's explanations about his decision sheds more light on his thinking process and how his quest for absolute focus was paramount for creating a vision and strategy which were clear. The lessons contained in these clips are generalizable to business, management, and leadership

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Creative Leadership and Simplicity

John Maeda, President of the Rhode Island School of Design redefines the concept of leadership and compares traditional leadership and creative leadership. I will have to follow up his presentation later on. Interesting how the concepts of Web 2.0 and Change Management are interwoven on this conference. I took the opportunity of another keynote that I weren't so interested in to check John's Laws of Simplicity (just mind you - John is a designer but uses his wisdom to talk about society, management etc. In 1999, Maeda was included in Esquire magazine’s list of the 21 most important people for the twenty-first century). So, here are his Laws of Simplicty:

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