Fortune Interview With Steve Jobs

As part of their “America’s Most Admired Companies” package (Apple placed first), Fortune has a rare interview with Steve Jobs. The format is horrible — 3,000 words spread over 15 web pages, averaging just 200 words per page. Shameless page-view-inflation at its worst, but it’s worth it. A few highlights:

  • “We do no market research. We don’t hire consultants. The only consultants I’ve ever hired in my 10 years is one firm to analyze Gateway’s retail strategy so I would not make some of the same mistakes they made.”

  • “People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully.”

  • “So what we do every Monday is we review the whole business. We look at what we sold the week before. We look at every single product under development, products we’re having trouble with, products where the demand is larger than we can make. All the stuff in development, we review. And we do it every single week. I put out an agenda — 80% is the same as it was the last week, and we just walk down it every single week.”

★ Wednesday, 5 March 2008