Sometime innovation could be as simple as asking right questions. As the book, Innovator’s DNA describes, one of the key innovations in the Apple II, the computer that launched Apple, came from Jobs’ decision that it should be quiet.
His conviction came from meditation he learned during his tour in India. He found the noise of a computer fan distracting. So Jobs asked a question, why should a computer have fan? This was a fairly radical notion at the time. Nobody else had questioned the need for a fan because all computers required a fan to prevent overheating. Getting rid of the fan wouldn’t be possible without a different type of power supply that generated less heat.
Jobs found Rob Holt who innovated a switching power supply that made it possible. Jobs’ pursuit of quiet computer and Rob’s innovation for a power supply made Apple II the quietest computer.
Had Jobs never asked that question, “Why does a computer need a fan?”, the Apple we know might have not existed today.
Thinking Space 