Inside Steve's Brain - Leander Kahney [78]
Apple tries to recruit creative computerphiles fresh out of school, the kind of kids who think working at the Apple store would be a good first job. As an incentive, Apple offers in-house training. While working at the store, staff members are taught how to use professional software applications like Final Cut Pro, Garageband, and other applications that may prove useful later on. The turnover rate is relatively low for retail: about 20 percent, when the industry average is above 50 percent, according to Apple.
The stores are evolving from well-designed shopping centers into learning environments. Apple has been adding additional advice “bars” at some of the bigger stores, including an iPod bar for advice and repair, and a Studio bar to help customers with creative projects, like making movies or laying out photo books. The idea of free advice bars is beginning to spread to other retailers. Whole Foods grocery, for example, in 2006 started experimenting with an advice bar for recipes and ingredients at a store in Austin, Texas.
Whereas most computer companies sell their wares at high-volume big-box stores, and offer support only by phone, Apple’s stores are a radically different proposition. Johnson calls the stores “high touch,” a phrase that means dealing with a human instead of a computer. The term is sometimes used to mean good customer service. Nordstrom and Starbucks are said to be high touch, but no one had tried it with computers. “In a high-tech world, wouldn’t it be nice to have some high touch?” Johnson said. Jobs and Johnson decided to put good service into computer shopping and change the way people shopped for technology.
The retail stores demonstrate Apple’s innovation at work. Unlike the doomed Power Mac Cube, the stores were designed with the customer experience firmly in mind. Like all of Apple’s products, the store was prototyped extensively in the development stage. Apple was open and flexible in its thinking, and brazenly stole some of its best ideas from others. The stores’ philosophy, design, and layout came from the digital hub strategy. And the execution came from Jobs’s uncompromising focus on the customer experience.
Lessons from Steve
• Don’t lose sight of the customer. The Cube bombed because it was built for designers, not customers.
• Study the market and the industry. Jobs is constantly looking to see what new technologies are coming down the pike.
• Don’t consciously think about innovation. Systemizing innovation is like watching Michael Dell try to dance. Painful.
• Concentrate on products. Products are the gravitational force that pulls it all together.
• Remember that motives make a difference. Concentrate on great products, not becoming the biggest or the richest.
• Steal. Be shameless about stealing other people’s great ideas.
• Connect. For Jobs, creativity is simply connecting things.
• Study. Jobs is a keen student of art, design, and architecture. He evens runs around parking lots looking at Mercedeses.
• Be flexible. Jobs dropped a lot of long-cherished traditions that made Apple special—and kept it small.
• Burn the boats. Jobs killed the most popular iPod to make room for a new, thinner model. Burn the boats, and you must stand and fight.
• Prototype. Even Apple’s stores were developed like every other product: prototyped, edited, and refined.
• Ask customers. The popular Genius Bar came from customers.
Chapter 7
Case Study: How It All Came Together with the iPod