“Tweakers” and revising the vision, research and otherwise

Last weekend, Mona Simpson’s eulogy for her brother, Steve Jobs, was published by the New York Times. It made the rounds on the Internet, and was especially pertinent for containing Jobs’ last words: “OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.”

I have to admit, these are awesome last words and the eulogy is very moving. If you haven’t read it go read it. Really. It’s beautiful.

In the latest issue of The New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell reviews Walter Isaacson’s new biography of Jobs, and Gladwell’s review/essay provides much more honesty and color than the eulogy. Simpson’s eulogy paints Jobs as the ultimate aesthete, while Gladwell and Isaacson go a step further: What does being an aesthete mean to the people around you? What does it mean for your work? How did it shape the world of technology as we know it?

Jobs was a tweaker — a person who took an existing idea and revised until perfection. Revised until exhaustion. Took years to find the right clothes dryer. Was an editor over a visionary. Gladwell compares this approach to that of Bill Gates — a person who now uses his imagination not to perfect what he has already envisioned and created, but to create something new in a different realm. Both men are brilliant, and both ways of seeing are vital to technological progress. We need the imagination and we need the tweakers, too.

Market research, to me, works the same way. We need both Gates and Jobs mentality to make progress — we need the imagination and the perfection. We need people to build new platforms and we need people to perfect methodologies within those new platforms — people to communicate with the builders and tell them what works and what doesn’t. Editors and makers.

At the same time, we also need people on the same wavelength. Both Gates and Jobs wanted to change things; both men wanted to keep the world evolving. The same has to be said of people interested in the evolution of the research industry, including academic research. In order to keep progressing we need people willing to make the change. Otherwise, it will all fall flat.