Interesting piece from Guy English on getting from a series of failures to crushing success. The missing ingredient? Time.
An entertaining read, but also a thoughtful lesson in product evolution.
Getting from failure plus failure plus failure to crushing success
I think this is more technology evolution than product evolution. NeXT was never a truly finished product, not to customers (I was one). NeXT was really a research company. Then at Apple, more R&D was needed to make the OS fit the Mac. Then the evolution into iOS required more R&D. This was technology evolution, not product evolution. Because NeXT Workstation was not the same product that iPhone is today.
The distinction is important because NeXT was not ready to ship, not because Sun and SGI were more established. As it turned out, NeXT was a the R&D outpost that Jobs built for Apple.
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” –Thomas Edison