By Christopher Murphy CHAPTER 13Fadell’s story is an interesting one. (If you get the chance to hear him
speak, clear your diary as he’s a deeply engaging presenter.) During his ini-
tial period working on the development of the iPod, Fadell was an indepen-
dent contractor; only later, under pressure, did he join Apple permanently.
This underlines the fact that a conductor need not always be a CEO; nor do
they even need to be a full-time employee to shape a vision and coordinate
a team. Under intense pressure from Jobs to deliver an iPod in time for
Christmas, Fadell looked beyond Apple’s internal teams to identify external
talent. This ability, to identify the best team members — the right primed
brains — and bring them in to assist on the task at hand is what a great
conductor possesses. Need a new drummer to add another dimension to
your sound? There are talented session musicians aplenty; use them.
It’s Fadell’s lateral thinking — recasting the team members — that’s
interesting. Lateral thinking, a phrase coined by Edward de Bono in 1967, is
another term the idea-hunter should understand:
With logic you start out with certain ingredients, just as in playing chess you
start out with given pieces [...] Lateral thinking is concerned not with playing
with the existing pieces but with seeking to change those very pieces.Fadell arguably took this a stage further, changing not only the pieces,
but the players in the game playing with those pieces.
Pulling together a carefully selected range of players from different
teams and then using their hive mind to conjure up ideas can prove incred-
ibly powerful and it lies at the heart of companies like Apple, Google and
many other giants of innovation. Drawing from a rich gene pool of talent
and seeking new combinations of assembled ideas can very quickly result
in an abundance of riches.
Get a number of people together in a room, equipped with Sharpies
and flip charts, give yourself a limited amount of time (half an hour should
prove more than enough), and you’ll be surprised at the results a few
well-chosen people can generate. The key is to work fast, pursue divergent