Make Something Wonderful

I just finished reading Make Something Wonderful, a Steve Jobs ‘autobiography’ published last year. His family curated a collection of his talks, emails, essays, and interviews to tell his life story in his own words. One story stood out for its relevance to physicians.

When Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak started Apple, it wasn’t part of some grand vision. They just wanted a computer but couldn’t afford the thousands of dollars they cost. So, they scavenged parts around Silicon Valley and built what they called the Apple I.

Their friends saw it and wanted one too. Soon, they were spending 50 hours building each computer by hand. To save time, they realized they could design a prebuilt circuit board, instead of having to hand-wire each part, which cut the assembly time to 1 hour.

A local store then asked them to make 50 computers for them. Jobs and Woz never thought of doing it as a business, until that point it was just a passion project they were pouring hours into.

Jobs and Woz ended up building double the amount that they had an order for, and learned sales and distribution to profit off the remainder.

But here is where it gets interesting. They then took that idea for this pre-built computer and pitched it to their respective employers at HP and Atari. Both employers turned them down.

And it was that rejection which ultimately led them to start Apple.

How often do we, as physicians, encounter inefficiencies or broken systems and turn to someone in the chain of command with an idea of how to fix them? How often does nothing happen?

Most great ideas die there. You don’t get permission, you sigh at the bureaucracy, and life moves on.

Amjad Massad, founder of Replit, experienced something very similar. Amjad built Replit as a side project to let anyone learn programming from their browser.

When operating costs grew, he pitched it to Facebook, where he worked at the time. They declined. Today, Replit is a billion-dollar company.

The takeaway? If you see something broken and have an idea to fix it, don’t wait for someone else to give you permission.

The best ideas don’t come from the top down. They come from people like us, in the trenches, solving problems we see every day.

The mentality is best summed up in one of my favorite Muhammad Ali quotes. "I sought the advice and cooperation from all those around me, but not permission."

Best,
Mohammed