John Gruber writes Daring Fireball, one of the best blogs on technology management, innovation, and business, generally from an Apple baseline. I like how he selects from the news of the day, pulls a quote, and provides a quick commentary. Often he needs only a title or a single sentence. Oh, to be able to do that!
In a recent post, Gruber pulls apart the idea that Steve Jobs would have done it perfectly (bold added):
Apple was far from perfect under Steve Jobs. But in hindsight, critics and skeptics of the company now see fit to deem his reign flawless or nearly so. Here’s a guy on Yahoo Finance telling Henry Blodget that “Steve Jobs wasn’t wrong about anything ever.”
What you want is to be (1) right more often than wrong; (2) willing to recognize when you are wrong; and (3) able and willing to correct whatever is wrong. If you expect perfection, to be right all the time, you’re going to fail on all three of those — you will be wrong sometimes, that’s just human nature; you’ll be less willing or unwilling to recognize when you’re wrong because you’ve talked yourself into expecting perfection; and you won’t fix what’s wrong because you’ll have convinced yourself you weren’t wrong in the first place. The only way to come close to being right all the time is to be willing to change your mind and recognize mistakes — it’s never going to happen that you’re right all the time in the first place.
Makes you wonder if such a thing has happened at university technology licensing offices.