1. Intro to Innovation

On 9th Jan 2007, Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs revolutionized the world when he introduced the iPhone. The “smart phones” during that time such as Blackberry, Nokia E62 and Moto Q had one common design element which Jobs had a problem with: keyboards.

“What’s wrong with their user interfaces?” asked Jobs. “Well, the problem with them is really sort of in the bottom 40 (percent) there.”

Keyboards were just annoying. They took up almost half of the phone space, you could not remove them just because you are not using them, and companies cannot realistically keep adding keyboards in newer models if some application deems it necessary. How do you solve this problem?

If you were at Apple and Steve Jobs came with this design problem to the team and you jokingly responded “Well, why don’t you just remove all keyboards, then there would be no keyboards to worry about?” then I assure you, everyone would laugh and silently pray for your demise, except Jobs. He would give you a raise.

The element of surprise is often in simple things.

Turns out, the iPhone was just that: No keyboards. Just one big flat 3.5-inch touchscreen with a home button.

It operated purely with hand touch and required no stylus. Jobs called their patented technology “Multi Touch.” It was far more accurate, avoided unintended touches and had multi finger gestures.

Aside from other functionalities the phone provided, the main takeaway was a shift in paradigm in user interface for smartphones. This would ultimately change the way humans interact with phones forever.

This is essentially how smartphones were (left) and how the iPhone (right) was:

Do you even see the difference in screen size accessible to user?

Now back to you and Jobs. Once Jobs took your joke seriously and was planning something big, his next question would have been “So how will the users type in if there are no physical keyboards?”

You reply, “The keyboard can now be on the screen itself. Virtually.”

Hence, the touchscreen and multi touch revolution takes their first baby steps and you get a big raise. The keyboards were software driven such that it prompted onto the touchscreen itself when required and absent when not.

The point of this story is that often, you need to ask the right questions to trigger the right actions. If Jobs never asked what could be done to the keyboards, maybe a full-fledged touch screen era would be delayed. We may never know. Once the question is asked, it is now important to respond in that same line until an acceptable solution is reached.

For instance, when Jobs asked what can be done to solve the keyboard issue, you could have said “reduce keyboard size to maximize screen size” or “some keyboards can be eliminated, and some can be kept” but instead you said, “remove the keyboard entirely.” This is quite bold, since so far, no companies took that step, but that is exactly why change should be given an opportunity.

To see if that idea works, Jobs further asked where people would type in, given there is no literal physical keyboard, to which you said that keyboard may now be on the screen itself, which opens a whole new design space for front end developers.

Now, is that executable should have been the next question and say the software engineers comply saying that keyboards can be displayed on screen when needed and off when not, leaving you the entire screen to work with other applications.

This is how ideas take the form of a product, slow and steadily. Ask the right questions. Trigger the right actions. Iterate until the most acceptable solution is reached.

Today, as I write this, Apple is one of the most successful and valuable businesses in the world, with a market cap of roughly $3 trillion.