Learn and get inspired from other people's successes

Last year I received the book "Inside Steve's Brain" for my birthday. In this book Leander Kahney reveals the secrets of Steve Job's success and takes a dive into the reasons behind Steve's success based on his personality traits. An inspirational book and very practical as Kahney ends each chapter with a list of key learnings, although when reading, you do wonder whether Steve himself would actually confirm these key learnings.
An important factor for being innovative is shifting your paradigm, look at things from different perspectives and think out of the box. For me, these books facilitate this where sometimes even the way some obvious things are described gives a slightly different perspective then you had before. Let me share with you some key learnings fromt the book that I like:

• Saying no saved Apple. Be selective and learn to say no. Focus on the few things that you are good at.
• Be perfectionistic and go for highest quality, do not accept compromize: in your product, your people, your processes etc.
• Design is function, not shape.
• Create prototypes and test.
• Combine & steel: often great ideas come from combining different things, look at integration of technologies. Sticking to vertical integration, Jobs created unique innovation opportunities with a relatively fast time to market.
• And, my favourite: do not ask your customers, they do not know what they want.