In Creative Selection, Ken Kocienda takes his reader inside Apple’s design process during “The Golden Age of Steve Jobs.” He explains how and why, in order to “understand what makes Apple what it is, its essence, you need to understand software.”

He identifies and examines what he characterizes as “seven elements essential to Apple’s software success.” They are:

!. Inspiration: Thinking BIG ideas and what might be possible
2. Collaboration: Working together well with other people and seeking to combine your complementary strengths
3. Craft: Applying skill to achieve high-quality [“insanely great”] results and always striving to do better
4. Diligence: Doing the necessary grunt work and never resorting to short cuts or half measures
5. Decisiveness: Making tough choices and refusing to delay or procrastinate
6. Taste: Developing a refined sense of judgment and finding the balance that produces a pleasing and integrated whole
7. Empathy: Trying to see the world from other people’s perspective and creating work that fits into their lives and adapts to their needs

These were never specified in an employees’ manual or included in a new-employee orientation. However, they have been — and continue to be — core values of a workplace culture within which “insanely great” ideas and products are produced through an rigorous process of “creative selection.”

Creative Selection was published by St. Martin’s Press (September 2018).  To learn more about Ken Kocienda, please click here.