Business-culture Quote by Walter Isaacson
““Still allergic to PowerPoints and formal presentations, he insisted that the people around the table hash out issues from various vantages and the perspectives of different departments. Because he believed that Apple's great advantage was its integration of the whole widget- from design to hardware to software to content-he wanted all departments at the company to work together in parallel. The phrases he used were "deep collaboration" and "concurrent engineering." Instead of a development process in which a product would be passed sequentially from engineering to design to manufacturing to marketing and distribution, these various departments collaborated simultaneously. " Our method was to develop integrated products, and that meant our process had to be integrated and collaborative," Jobs said. This approach also applied to key hires. He would have candidates meet the top leaders-Cook, Tevanian, Schiller, Rubinstein, Ive- rather than just the managers of the department where they wanted to work. " Then we all get together without the person and talk about whether they'll fit in," Jobs said.””
About This Quote
Source Biography: Walter Isaacson, “Steve Jobs”, 2011
Jobs championed simultaneous teamwork across all departments, calling it deep collaboration and concurrent engineering, to integrate design, hardware, software, and content.
In simple terms: He pushed for all parts of a company to work together at the same time.
Foster cross‑functional teamwork.
Themes
Mood
Type
When to use this quote
- product development
- startup formation
- corporate restructuring
- team building
Key Concepts
Questions to Reflect On
- How can you balance parallel work with clear leadership?
- What structures support effective deep collaboration?
Coordinating many teams can cause conflict and slow decisions.