I went through Mr. Isaacson's Steve Jobs' biography and I would like to share with my information security community some, very personal and biased, learning points, potentially applicable to our industry.
As always, the intent of this post is not to replace the reading of this highly interesting and very well written book by Walter Isaacson.
- The author talks about reality distortion fields and how some people live on them and the difficulty to interact with them for the rest of the mortals when we realise that their reality is different to ours.
In information security there are many people within reality distorting fields.
- However, there is a positive side to reality distortion fields, sometimes they become reality if effort, passion and innovation (and luck? and timing?) kick in.
Totally applicable to information security.
- Even introverts need a dense and effective network to succeed in business.
Frequently forgotten in Infosec.
- Successful business people does not equal successful parents.
- Successful business people does not equal ethical colleagues.
- Selling abilities are key in every social aspect of our lives (business, social, family).
- Some things definitely cannot be patented.
- Money is a hygienic motivational element.
- You can shift working passions during a long period of time (11 years passed since he was ousted from Apple until he came back).
Also very applicable (but hardly applied) to infosec people.
- Charismatic people use to have more troublesome lives than peacefully smooth characters.
Just go and attend any security conference, mingle with people around, and you will confirm this statement.
- The way a company is run can benefit hugely from innovation. We can innovate in the way we manage a company, or a team.
Totally applicable to information security.
- Brutal honesty is a management approach, up to the actors (the sender and recipient) to accept it or not.
- Marketing is key - so key that every Wednesday afternoon, every week, the CEO would meet their marketing people.
Marketing, the forgotten element in most Information Security units.
- Do you control the end-to-end the experience your customer or user goes through when using your product or your service?
Innovative element that security practitioners can apply from day one when they design their deliverables.
- Internal product cannibalisation? Go for it - Otherwise other companies and products will cannibalise yours.
Applicable to our information security products? Certainly. Let's do it.
- Persistence: key for success. Sometimes it's years what we need to devote for
something to succeed.
Is our industry persistent enough? Nice topic for a discussion.
- The second-product effect, if your company does not know why their first product was a success, then they will fail with their second product.
Have it in mind when expanding your security portfolio.
- Electronic communication is fine, but it you want to trigger and foster innovation, make physical communication, face to face, happen.
A piece of wisdom here for our industry, in which we overuse non-physical communication channels.
- Do not mention the ideas you have for a new product before you launch it... or someone else will be faster than you.
Already applied in our industry ;-)
- Privacy and running a publicly traded company create sometimes some conflicts.
Difficult to accept sometimes, but privacy is (or will be) already gone?
- Sometimes a product launch is a failure and later on it gets transformed into a historic breakthrough, especially if you use powerful marketing to let people know how they can use it.
Again, a link to smart marketing that in our industry still does not exist.
- Sometimes, going through serious health problems does not make rough characters softer.
- A feature of apple's culture: "accountability is strictly ensured".
Tough but effective.
- One of the next revolutions to come: textbooks and education. They really did not change a lot in many years.
Are we still on time in terms of securing the coming new learning experience?
- The clash of two different technology philosophies, open versus closed in terms of where software runs and the different approach Microsoft and Apple followed.
- Things can really change (although most of the times you need time, passion and patience). E.g. in 2000 Apple was worth only a twentieth of the value that Microsoft had in the market; in 2010 Apple surpassed Microsoft in market value.
- You choose, in business, either devote the time to start dying or devote the time to start being re-born.
- And, last but not least, when death comes to visit us, we all strive to get that piece of mind that was difficult to find during our lives with our people (family, relatives, colleagues, etc.).
Happy innovation!
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| Being fast! |
