《A Fine Line》翻书笔记

作者：Hartmut Esslinger
出版社： Jossey-Bass
原著出版时间：2009年6月29日
来源：下载的 PDF 版本

作者 Hartmut Esslinger 是 frog 的创始人，乔布斯背后的男人之一，著名的「Snow White」设计概念提出者，Esslinger 和乔布斯颇有几分神似，不然也不会一拍即合几十年，本书介绍了作者创立 frog 40多年的创业经历，描绘了作者眼中工业设计中「设计驱动」的战略价值（frog 这四个字母需要小写，就是为了体现其反叛的自由意志）

开篇概括了书的主旨，算是非常的切题了：

This book examines that fine line as it courses through our material culture, distinguishing “great” from “good,” creative strategies from imitative acts, and excellence from also-ran mediocrity.

作者认为对于工业产品，完全的外包是不合适的，最终只会造成「便宜、再便宜、质量不合格」的状况，因为在这个外包的过程中，企业会逐渐的失去许多的东西，颇有洞见：

• Lost Product Knowledge
• Lost Manufacturing Skills
• Lost Opportunities for Innovation
• Lost Economic Stability

摘录：

As the most successful companies and brands know, design isn’t just about making something look good. Design enables a company to invent and project innovative concepts that enhance human interactions and experiences. And, when we design a new and better object or a more inspiring human experience, the design itself becomes a branding symbol. People recognize visual symbols as cultural expression, and we embrace those symbols that reflect our deeper values, such as a delight in simple, elegant usability. In essence, design humanizes technology and helps businesses appeal to the human spirit. And it is the cultural context of design that roots business in history and connects it to a more profound future.
I have been successful in life because I understood very early on that business needs creativity like humans need oxygen, and I was able to convince my clients that they needed to “breathe” in order to flourish. It hasn’t been easy. In the beginning I knew that, as both a consumer and a designer, I wanted technical products that were designed to connect with people on an emotional level, an idea I would later sum up as “emotional design.” Those kinds of products weren’t being manufactured in my native homeland, Germany, nor in many other places back in the 1960s when I started my company. Forty years later, frog design has had an impact on manufacturing and service industry offerings around the world, and the design-driven strategies of global brands such as Sony, Apple, Microsoft, SAP, Motorola, HP, and GE carry the frog DNA.
I am fortunate to have spent my professional life creating successful design-driven strategies with these dynamic corporations. Having learned firsthand how truly great business leaders partner with designers, I have developed a step-by-step innovation process that leverages the power of that partnership. That process is at the heart of the collaborative model of innovation-driven business design that I’ve outlined in this book. Each chapter details a critical phase of the successful innovation driven business strategy, illustrated with ideas, strategies, and stories aimed at informing designers and business leaders, alike.

In the end, the business-design partnership advances our industrial culture by providing sustainable innovation, cultural identity, and economic consistency. But to accomplish that goal, design must cross the line that separates commercial-functional benchmarks from cultural relevance and spirituality. This book examines that fine line as it courses through our material culture, distinguishing “great” from “good,” creative strategies from imitative acts, and excellence from also-ran mediocrity.
In my experience, true success comes for the designer and the business executive when the two can bridge the artificial lines that too often have separated their worlds. This book also talks about building that bridge—about how creative minds and business minds collaborate, and how both sides of the business-design partnership can prosper within that process. I won’t say that this collaboration is a silver bullet for every problem facing a company, but I do believe it is the best way to develop a better business today and to build a sustainable future for that business. I’ve written this book to promote and inspire a new business reality. The stories and ideas in these pages offer proof that the cultural, humanistic, and economic power of creative design is better for the bottom line, better for business, and better for our planet as a whole.

With gratitude to
my wife and partner Patricia Roller,
my children Marc, Nico, Max, & Anna (she gave this book its title),
my teacher Karl Dittert,
my first client Dieter Motte,
my friends inside and outside of frog design,
my world-challenging students,
and my courageous clients.

It’s a big leap for a creative consulting company to grow from its roots in a tiny garage in Germany’s Black Forest to a position of influence with esteemed global franchises, but I see the story of that transition as just one example of the incredible power of the business/design alliance. Today, there’s much talk about the “new” power of this alliance, but the power of design-driven business strategy isn’t a new idea at all. It’s the idea that spurred me to start my own design firm in 1969, and it’s what drove Steve Jobs to hire my firm to join him in building such a strategy for his own company. What’s new is the rapidly growing recognition of this power and the need for cultivating it. A first step toward achieving that goal is a firm understanding of the vital role of design in shaping an innovation-driven business model.
When I founded my design firm, my goals were simple, yet powerful: to redefine design as a strategic profession, and to continually promote its relevance to industry and business. I wanted to create technical products that consumers could love for their beauty and their usefulness. And I wanted all designers, including myself, to be masters of our own destiny, not just hired hands brought in to put a shining new face on the same, tired old ideas. I was determined to bring my ideas to the world— and I felt as though every moment of my life had been spent in preparation for that opportunity.
Because I grew up in war-torn Germany, a country still coming to grips with the atrocities of the Third Reich, my aesthetic and my ideologies could not help but be informed by the changing world around me. I was born on June 5, 1944, in Beuren, a tiny village buried deep in Germany’s Black Forest. The only adult men under the age of sixty in my village were French soldiers who had occupied the area—all of our fathers and older brothers had died in the war or were being held in POW camps. Too young to really understand the concept of war, we children always tried to listen to adults when they spoke in hushed tones about “the bombings” and “Stalingrad,” but none of it made much sense to us. No one spoke of the Nazi terror or the Third Reich—not even my extended family, which, as I learned many years later, had lost seven of its own members to the concentration camps.
When our men eventually did come home from the camps—my father, Johannes Heinrich Esslinger, among them—they were strangers to us. These silent, brooding men spoke little about the war or their experiences in it, but their bursts of rage and violence could be triggered by the merest childhood prank and often ended in beatings for us children. Sometimes, we guiltily found ourselves envying friends who had lost their fathers and were treated that much better by their grieving mothers. Years later, a group of American officers came to my school and showed us students a documentary film about the war, some of the footage shot by the Nazis themselves and some taken by the Allies as they liberated the concentration camps. As I grasped the reality of what had unfolded in my country during the war, I was enveloped in shame, sadness, and fury, and a new understanding of the bitter forces that had shaped my father and his fellow soldiers. “Never again, Fascism!” I thought to myself. Better to be a rebellious outcast than a blindly obedient servant.

And so, in 1969, while still a student, I started “esslinger design”—the firm that would become frog. The first goal I set for myself was to achieve economic success. I refused to accept the role of the starving artist. Besides, I was certain that the design process was too important to be ignored by companies looking to gain a strong competitive advantage, and I knew there were business leaders out there who would value the profession as much as I did. The rest of the plan was simple but ambitious, and I wrote it down in six steps:

1. Look for “hungry” clients who want to go to the top;
2. Be business-minded and do great work for my clients, not for myself;
3. Get famous—not as an egotistic artist, but as a visionary;
4. Use that fame as working capital to build the company;
5. Build the best global design company ever; and
6. Always look for the best people—as employees, partners, and clients.

With the back cover of FORM, our tiny company began to take shape in the public eye. We bought a Brazilian tree frog, photographed it in an outrageously funny jumping session, and published it in our back page ad. Not long after that we adopted a green frog as our logo—we felt it was a fitting image, given the vast numbers of frogs that inhabited our native Black Forest, and that the word “frog” itself is hidden in our country’s name—the (F)ederal (R)epublic (O)f (G)ermany (“frog design” is always printed in lower-case, a rebellion against German grammatical rules that, forty years later, other companies are beginning to adopt). As the company grew, we refined our ads to be as seductive, attention-getting, and innovative as possible. We saw our firm as an alternative to the big and boring names that dominated the industry at that time, and we wanted to position ourselves as such. Taking those back covers forced us to define our message and to create a strategy of self-promotion around it. We ambitiously declared ourselves “the new face of German-Global design.”

Naturally, any reasonable person may wonder why such major global giants as Disney, Microsoft, General Electric, and Motorola turn to an agency such as frog for advice and solutions when they have all the resources on earth at their disposal. Our long-term colleague Steven Skov-Holt answered this question eloquently many years ago: “Our clients and client companies come to creative agencies because they need . . . radical solutions that they can’t get through their own internal groups [and]. . . because tender, fresh new ideas have trouble surviving the toxicity of most corporate settings.”

I first met Steve Jobs in 1982. I was visiting California, and I attended a party thrown by one of frog’s ex-interns, Jack Hokanson. About thirty designers showed up, and Rob Gemmell—a designer at Apple—was among them. He spoke highly about Steve Jobs, saying he had committed Apple to pursuing technical excellence and world-class design. When Apple initiated a global design search, Rob brought my ideas to Steve’s attention. Steve and I met in person (his T-shirt beat mine that day in the “old and worn” competition) and the ball started to roll.
Jerry Manock and Rob narrowed the competition to just two studios—one of which was frog. While our competitor represented a very European design focus, I tried to reposition Apple as a California-global brand—Hollywood and music, a bit of rebellion, and natural sex appeal. frog built about forty models to demonstrate our concepts and we arranged them in a meeting room at Apple’s headquarters, creating a virtual showroom of the company’s future. When Steve and the board members entered the room, they smiled and said, “Yes, this is it!” frog’s radical design language became known as “Snow White” and it provided the born-in-America gene for Apple’s DNA. A dramatic departure from the clunky, olive-drab look that dominated computer technologies at that time, our design language evolved from these strategic decisions:

• Apple computers would be small, clean, and white.
• All graphics and typestyles had to express cleanliness and order.
• Final forms would offer smart, high-tech shapes, created with the most advanced tooling.
• All product designs would adhere to an environmentally friendly “No paint—less cost” rule, based on treating ABS plastic and all other materials with care.

Steve Jobs and I also agreed on one guiding principle: “Do it right the first time.” Steve offered me a long-term contract on the condition that I move to California and duplicate our Altensteig facility close by Apple. We shook hands, and that handshake launched one of the most decisive collaborations in the history of industrial design. frog’s investment in this nine-month competition had cost us more than the $200,000, but we were richly rewarded with an annual retainer ten times that. In return, we made good on our promise to set up shop in the San Francisco Bay area (which, twenty-seven years later, remains the home of frog’s headquarters).

Today, the business world is engaged in a global battle between individualism and collectivism or “Culture versus Commodity,” as I call it. As companies dive for the lowest costs, they abandon highly qualified local workers and place their bets with low-cost labor overseas—all under the “Flat-World” banner of cost-efficiency. As we’ve now seen, strategies that boost the bottom line in the short term often result in unsupportable losses down the road. Businesses that sacrifice their unique strengths for the safety of shared efficiency make losers of us all. They rob us of meaningful jobs, even as they diminish the economic and cultural value of once viable and innovative brands.
In fact, the old Flat-World economy couldn’t be “won,” and now it can’t even be defended. Yes, by cutting cost and driving scale, businesses have helped to make high-tech products and digital services like computers and cell phones affordable beyond the most optimistic projections of even ten years ago. But the dirty by-product of these stunning technological advances is a world dominated by products that lack any semblance of human or cultural context. These mass-produced, mass-marketed objects don’t provide any type of inspiring consumer experiences. And, in markets divided into high-end luxury and value driven cheapness, competitive strategy becomes murky. How can a company add true value or even just visually differentiate its low-cost cell phone from those of its competitors, when all of them are designed and manufactured in just five or six Asian factories?

“When your numbers are good, you’re good” is a common refrain in the board room, but savvy investors want to know how good your numbers will look in three to five years. Long-term success requires that organizations remain focused on a well-articulated business strategy, and the responsibility for maintaining that strategic focus rests with the organizations’ leadership. Without the support and guidance of strong leaders, any larger strategy will stall in its initial stages. Successfully forming and implementing strategic goals is a creative act in and of itself, and it requires leaders who share a fundamental understanding of the role of design in promoting a culture of innovation throughout the business. Although few corporations mirror the smooth operations spelled out in their press releases, the internal discord that results from a lack of shared vision at the leadership level can destroy a company’s coordinated pursuit of a design-driven strategy of innovation.
My first lesson in leadership came to me as a twenty-year-old lieutenant in the German army. I had joined out of high school, and in less than two years found myself in charge of thirty-five cadets, most of them older than I was. I quickly understood that posing, preening, and pretending wouldn’t help gain the respect or cooperation of my troops, and that to be a true leader, I had to be authentic and caring. I’ve learned a great deal more about leadership since then, of course. In addition to building and running my own business, I’ve had the good fortune to work with the leaders of some of the most dynamic companies in the world and to observe their successes and failures. I’ve seen that great leaders have the ability to develop new and better strategies aimed at possibilities that others can’t even comprehend. And that kind of foresight comes from a place of creativity.
Creative strategies involve outsized risks that can only be managed through ethical decisions. But idealistic goals and principles alone won’t cut it; companies also have to establish specific methods and processes for implementing a creative strategy, and they must be guided by inspired leadership. That’s the art of business.

Some of the most valuable lessons and advice I’ve gathered in my professional career have come from Japan and the Japanese. Kenichi Ohmae’s classic book, The Mind of the Strategist, has been an especially invaluable source of information on business strategy, and I think it’s as relevant today as it was thirty years ago. One of Ohmae’s key recommendations is a great example of the ongoing Japanese theme I mentioned in the previous chapter, “Simple is best.” “In the construction of any business strategy,” he writes, “three main players must be taken into account: the corporation itself, the customer, and the competition.” Pretty straightforward advice, but (again) not so easy to follow.

So while his competitors were focused on defending their success in the personal computing market, Steve Jobs opened up a whole new line of attack by creating new and uncharted markets. The first result of this strategy was the iPod/iTunes line of products. The second was the iPhone.
This hidden “fourth line,” a reserve of new product development and innovation, caught Apple’s competitors off guard and precipitated a rash of chaotic reactions on their part. When HP’s then-CEO Carly Fiorina tried to play catch-up with her “digital consumer strategy,” she made a deal with Apple to sell its iPod under the HP brand—but without any design change. Naturally, consumers saw little reason to buy what appeared to be an Apple product from HP. When Fiorina finally pulled the plug on this naïve venture, it was too late for HP to get into this new and booming market with a product of its own. Dell stayed closer to its comfort zone and simply put its logo onto an otherwise generic music player, but that strategy didn’t work either. Dell’s player looked boring, whereas the iPod (leveraging Apple’s initial strengths) offered a fresh, exciting design.
In the meantime, Apple’s disruption in the marketplace allowed it to regain relevance as a mind-share leader. The company followed its new momentum and began to make headway in the personal computing sector with dramatic gains for its Macintosh products. Apple’s coup de grace was the launch of its own retail stores, which set a new retail-experience standard of excellence in shop design and customer service and created a cultural and inspirational context in which Apple products could shine even more brightly.
Beyond its classic use of the “fourth-line” approach to overwhelming the competition, Steve Jobs’ reinvention of the Apple brand demonstrated two very important truths about strategy: First, a good creative strategy can define which external—and uncontrollable—factors might influence a company’s potential opportunities. Second, winning strategies are based on the values and expectations of those who have ownership and power in and around the business.

I put all these ideas to use back in 1972 when I landed one of frog’s first big contracts with KaVo (Kaltenbach + Voigt, now owned by Danaher/USA), a privately held dental company that had industrialized the dental air turbine. When I first met the head of research and development, Martin Saupe, he showed me around the company’s engineering departments and its very impressive factory. I noticed right away that KaVo’s R&D group wasn’t coming up with the kind of products the factory was capable of. I immediately thought, “Here’s a tactical opportunity.” I’d been asked to design a new light for one of their existing chairs, but I realized that we could and should imagine something bigger. As it turned out, the project became a life-changing venture for both KaVo and frog.
I knew going into the project that only the best work would do. My partners Andreas and Georg and I had just one week to prepare for the pitch meeting and, for the next seven days, the three of us worked day and night to conceptualize an entirely new dental system. The design had better ergonomics than anything on the market as well as a more advanced focus on hygienic materials and state-of-the-art production specs. We made 1:1 scale models of the key components like the treatment chair. We also built a 1:10 scale model of the whole system, made with a perfect finish so we could get nice photographs for our presentation. The last night before the pitch, I went to bed at 1 o’clock in the morning. Four hours later, after they had developed the films, framed the slides, and wrapped the models, Andreas and George woke me up. By the time I was ready to go to the meeting, they were already asleep in the studio.
When I showed our models and explained the new system to Martin Saupe, he was blown away. I was certain that our hard work had paid off.
But there was one problem—and it was a big one. After complimenting me on the quality of my pitch, Martin asked me to come look inside a cabinet in his office. In it, I saw about twenty small-scale models from other design companies, mouldering on the shelves like headstones in a creative cemetery. Martin Saupe obviously didn’t understand the radical departure our proposal had taken, and he told me he needed “more time to think about it,” which meant that he was going to pass on our project.
“Nothing but the best,” I thought. Scrambling to save the pitch and not let our week’s worth of work go to waste, I asked Martin Saupe to let me speak with the final decision-maker at KaVo. After a little back and forth, Saupe agreed to call the owner and CEO Kurt Kaltenbach and his CFO, who were in a meeting just one floor above us. I could tell that they were reluctant to meet with me, but Martin—perhaps inspired by my persistence—made a good sales pitch, and up we went to the next level of “command.”
I set up my projector as soon as I got to the meeting room, but kept the models under wraps in my box. Then I proceeded to explain how the system we were proposing would shift the company’s strategy, positioning KaVo not just as a company selling dental systems, but as a company selling holistic treatment solutions that provide a healthier work environment for the dentist and make going to the dentist more bearable for patients. As I spoke, I projected the images of our new system, called Estetica, on the screen—and they looked great. But I kept the focus of the pitch aimed squarely at describing the new strategy KaVo could embrace in tandem with the new product.
At the end of the presentation, Kurt Kaltenbach said, “This is what I have been waiting for all my life!” We signed a contract on the spot, and the relationship with frog lasted for more than three decades, until Danaher/USA bought KaVo in 2003.
Getting the KaVo contract was a great victory for frog, but as you can see, victory would not have been possible if I hadn’t stuck to frog’s strategic goals and “only the best” principle, by pushing for a much more radical and better solution than KaVo originally asked for, and by persuasively arguing for a chance to present my ideas to the organization’s top-level decision-makers. In fact, adhering rigidly to strong principles and a passionate desire to win with integrity actually makes it easy to be flexible and pragmatic in the pursuit of success, because you never have to question the reasons driving your efforts.

About forty years ago, I scribbled down these four objectives and they remain a valuable guide to frog’s continuing goals:

1. Find your “sweet spot.”
   To establish the best arena in which to compete, I looked for the one area in design where I was very good and where others were not—and that was the field of electronic technology design. Due to my studies in engineering, I knew the thinking and processes of electronic technology better than other designers, and I understood the complexities of its design, production, and support. (I also respected collaborative processes and the financial balance among investments, cost, and returns.) This arena was very attractive to me, because I was both ambitious and rebellious and I wanted the pleasure of shaking up the establishment, beating them with better work.
2. Be business minded and do great work for clients—and for your own company.
   This sounds like a simple idea, but it is one of the most difficult challenges for many in design. At frog, one major component of following this principle was to work according to our client’s economic needs. Another big challenge was to promote our work in the most professional ways—including building a strong brand. I think that frog was the first design agency to run a global advertising campaign in specialty magazines.
3. Look for “hungry” clients who want to get to the top.
   This sounds like a simple idea, but it is one of the most difficult challenges for many in design. At frog, one major component of following this principle was to work according to our client’s economic needs. Another big challenge was to promote our work in the most professional ways—including building a strong brand. I think that frog was the first design agency to run a global advertising campaign in specialty magazines.
4. Get famous—by being the best.
   I had to use this principle as a goal—otherwise I would never have achieved it. I wanted to be world-famous at age thirty-five, and was lucky enough to do so. But in the process, I learned that I had to be appropriately grateful to all who helped me gain this success, and I had to continually justify my fame through good and hard work. All of us at frog remember and follow the lessons we learned in applying this principle to our work.

“To be is to do.” —Immanuel Kant

“If you see the bandwagon, it’s too late.” —James Goldsmith

“Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action has arrived, stop thinking and go in.” —Napoleon Bonaparte

“If I’d asked people what they wanted, they would have said ‘faster horses.’” —Henry Ford

“Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.” —Martin Luther

“In a consumer society, there are inevitably two kinds of slaves: the prisoners of addiction and the prisoners of envy.” —Ivan Illich

Th e center of power is in the factory. —Akio Morita

Words Review List:

words	sentence
Mercedes	I was in the passenger seat of a Mercedes being driven by Steve Jobs along the hilly roads above Woodside, California
extolling	Steve was extolling the virtues of the user interface embodied in the car’s window controls
Bavaria	he had just visited in Bavaria who insisted on driving at breakneck speed
breakneck	he had just visited in Bavaria who insisted on driving at breakneck speed
quirks	Many years later, through one of those odd quirks of fate
Flextronics	I found myself sitting on the board of Flextronics at the time that it acquired Hartmut’s company, frog design
ergonomic	his mark also lies on the ergonomic design of a line of equipment for dentists’ offices
aesthetic	marrying the aesthetic with the functional while standing firm against the deadening forces of mediocrity
mediocrity	marrying the aesthetic with the functional while standing firm against the deadening forces of mediocrity
triumph	His work shows that taste can triumph, design and production can be soulmates
stylish	His stylish, elegant, and user-friendly designs
CitiCorp	including Acer, Adidas, AT&T, CitiCorp, Dell, Disney, GE
Fine Arts	an honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts from Parsons the New School for Design
initiative	serves on the advisory board of Design Ignites Change, an initiative that promotes design thinking among students
imitate	Do something wonderful, people may imitate it.
upheavals	during the social and economic upheavals that rocked post-World War II Germany
rift	choices that began with a painful family rift and led to a rich and satisfying career as a designer
fine line	I stepped over the fine line that sometimes separates creativity from comfort to found my own firm, frog design
flourish	I was able to convince my clients that they needed to “breathe” in order to flourish
sum up	an idea I would later sum up as “emotional design.”
savvy	how savvy business leaders cultivate a culture of innovation within their organizations
buy-in	With the buy-in from management in place
in place	With the buy-in from management in place
woven	Throughout this book, I’ve woven bits and pieces of my personal and professional history
ruthless	based on a ruthless quest for lower costs
niche markets	Customization and niche markets are eroding the demand for mass-produced commodities
eroding	Customization and niche markets are eroding the demand for mass-produced commodities
mantra	has become the new mantra for any enterprise looking for a secure foothold in 21st century markets
consistency	by providing sustainable innovation, cultural identity, and economic consistency
prosper	and how both sides of the business-design partnership can prosper within that process
staking a claim	staking a claim in the creative economy
garage	from its roots in a tiny garage in Germany’s Black Forest
atrocities	Because I grew up in war-torn Germany, a country still coming to grips with the atrocities of the Third Reich
Third Reich	Because I grew up in war-torn Germany, a country still coming to grips with the atrocities of the Third Reich
hushed tones	we children always tried to listen to adults when they spoke in hushed tones about “the bombings” and “Stalingrad”
Stalingrad	we children always tried to listen to adults when they spoke in hushed tones about “the bombings” and “Stalingrad”
concentration camps	as I learned many years later, had lost seven of its own members to the concentration camps
enveloped	I was enveloped in shame, sadness, and fury
outcast	Better to be a rebellious outcast than a blindly obedient servant
obedient servant	Better to be a rebellious outcast than a blindly obedient servant
not to mention	not to mention an ever-changing parade of attractive and exotic fashion models.
ever-changing	not to mention an ever-changing parade of attractive and exotic fashion models.
parade	not to mention an ever-changing parade of attractive and exotic fashion models.
in the gutter	declaring “All artists end up in the gutter,”
curl up	I watched the bright pages of my notebooks curl up and turn to ash in the family hearth
hearth	I watched the bright pages of my notebooks curl up and turn to ash in the family hearth
jurors	But the jurors—including Kienzle’s chief designer—viciously criticized all of the student designs as being “unrealistic”
viciously	But the jurors—including Kienzle’s chief designer—viciously criticized all of the student designs as being “unrealistic”
trophy	to succeed as a designer than any trophy or prize money would have done
stuffy	change the world of design by transforming its stuffy, hierarchical limits into something more dynamic
hierarchical	change the world of design by transforming its stuffy, hierarchical limits into something more dynamic
optimistic	It was the most optimistic and radical step I could ever take.
radical	It was the most optimistic and radical step I could ever take.
grandiose	but seven years later my seemingly grandiose plan had become a reality
amateur	as an amateur jazz and rock musician I had built my own amplifiers from mail-order components
amplifiers	as an amateur jazz and rock musician I had built my own amplifiers from mail-order components
stereo	provided true stereo sound when opened out
foam-encased	our design pioneered the use of plastic-bodied stereo components with foam-encased electronic elements
plywood	and pounds lighter than the traditional wood and plywood-encased stereos that dominated the market at that time
embossed	its surface texture of graduated, embossed dots served as the inspiration for this book’s cover design
skeptically	He looked at me skeptically, and asked if I was sure that our tiny garage-based operation could afford to carry
cemented	cemented a relationship that would last thirty-three years
seductive	as seductive, attention-getting, and innovative as possible
vanguard	The company represents the permanent vanguard in the arena of strategic design and business innovation
arena	The company represents the permanent vanguard in the arena of strategic design and business innovation
at their disposal	they have all the resources on earth at their disposal
boutique	design is an integral part of any successful business strategy, and not an artistic “boutique” profession
foothold	seeking to establish a foothold in an ever-evolving world economy
inroads	Computers were just beginning to make inroads into professional offices
clunky	A dramatic departure from the clunky, olive-drab look that dominated computer technologies at that time
olive-drab	A dramatic departure from the clunky, olive-drab look that dominated computer technologies at that time
typestyles	All graphics and typestyles had to express cleanliness and order
infused	Steve and his team have infused the Apple brand with design
tangle of	the world is not flat. It is a round and roiling tangle of complex cultures
corrugated	We, the people who occupy this corrugated landscape, are defined by our history
intricate	one size fits all, but fitting a business to the intricate contours of the real world is a far more challenging prospect
contours	one size fits all, but fitting a business to the intricate contours of the real world is a far more challenging prospect
semblance	world dominated by products that lack any semblance of human or cultural context
murky	in markets divided into high-end luxury and value driven cheapness, competitive strategy becomes murky
dwindling	as businesses seek answers to the dwindling prices, profits, and identity offered by markets clogged with
clogged	as businesses seek answers to the dwindling prices, profits, and identity offered by markets clogged with
cadets	in less than two years found myself in charge of thirty-five cadets
preening	I quickly understood that posing, preening, and pretending wouldn’t help gain the respect or cooperation of my troops
bold initiatives	seeing the future and supporting bold initiatives
dictatorial	He has a sometimes dictatorial manner that irritates a lot of people
irritates	He has a sometimes dictatorial manner that irritates a lot of people
integrity	Most people underestimate Steve’s personal loyalty and integrity
high-resolution	which had the capability to process the high-resolution PostScript graphics of scalable fonts
mortgaging	Apple learned to form close working partnerships with overseas firms, rather than mortgaging its intellectual capital to boost the bottom line
ousted	Yet, in the midst of this progress, Apple’s board ousted Steve Jobs
surge	In addition to the excitement caused by the initial stock surge
gauge	that can make it very difficult to gauge the effectiveness of current leadership
bizarre	In spite of the bizarre level of hype surrounding its release
hype surrounding	In spite of the bizarre level of hype surrounding its release
diluted	as it became diluted and patchy
patchy	as it became diluted and patchy
dead on	a German proverb that might be tough, but in this case, dead on
uprooted	After Amelio uprooted and tossed aside one-third of the company’s employees
interim	When Steve was back in as iCEO (interim CEO) he asked me for strategic input
ample	I’ve had ample exposure to leadership’s struggle on the path toward innovation
myopic	A myopic view of the bottom line may have something to do with it
lure	speculation and paper wealth can lure plenty of smart people away from their better judgment
ironically	Ironically, the success of the LVMH merger ultimately cost Henri his position
Sardinia	doing what he loved most—traveling in Sardinia
conservative	Common wisdom holds that business people are well organized and rather conservative
progressive	whereas creative people are more chaotic and progressive
onslaught	whether an onslaught from a stiff competitor or a lack of consumer spending due to a faltering economy
goner	The company looked like a goner
outflanked	other PC brands were outflanked
comfort zone	Dell stayed closer to its comfort zone and simply put its logo onto an otherwise generic music player
coup de grace	Apple’s coup de grace was the launch of its own retail stores
hygienic	a more advanced focus on hygienic materials
pitch meeting	My partners Andreas and Georg and I had just one week to prepare for the pitch meeting
Nothing but the best	“Nothing but the best,” I thought.
tandem	describing the new strategy KaVo could embrace in tandem with the new product
nimble	it enables organizations to remain nimble and ready to adapt to new developments
egomaniacs	this type of adaptive strategy leaves no space for egomaniacs, cynics, or prima-donnas
cynics	this type of adaptive strategy leaves no space for egomaniacs, cynics, or prima-donnas
prima-donnas	this type of adaptive strategy leaves no space for egomaniacs, cynics, or prima-donnas
mundane	connected to the mundane realities of daily business life
warehouse	we decided to include in our program a digital database “warehouse,”
antennas	for broadcasting via antennas, cable, or satellites
cable	for broadcasting via antennas, cable, or satellites