Big Ideas vs. Design: An Ideal Marriage

Steve Jobs: design freak, details freak.

Ray Ozzie: big idea guy, weak on details.

Actually, the article on Ray Ozzie says he is a poor communicator.  But I think the proof is in the pudding: both Lotus Notes and Groove (pre-Microsoft and after) were weak on User Interface (both visual and API).  He couldn’t communicate because, apparently, he doesn’t think at the level of small details.  Because he is not details oriented, he also couldn’t enforce the delivery of quality.  What he is, though, is a thinker of big ideas, at which he is terrific.  Notes, Groove, Azure (the Cloud), Mesh, Social: he saw these things early and made the first 3 happen (although Azure was chopped up inside Microsoft, that being another story).

Jobs, on the other hand, is not a Big Thinker: he decided against a hard drive in the first Mac, and also vetoed communication capabilities, saying that a floppy disk was all that was needed.  Nothing, except an incredible attention to design as it affects user experience, is particularly new in what Apple has presented in its product lines.

Put Jobs and Ozzie together, and you’ve got a team that would dominate the Consumer and Enterprise spaces.