Steve Jobs was asked years ago about how he planned to compete with the Wintel monopoly. He said, "I'm going to wait for the next big thing." He didn't say "I'm going to personally create the next big thing." Neither iTunes nor the iPod was his idea. The iTunes idea came from a small company calledSoundJam MP, and the genesis of the iPod was a design inside the head of Tony Fadell, a tech consultant who went to work for Apple. Steve Jobs's brilliance was in keeping his eyes open for the ideas, recognizing the moment, connecting the dots, and "creating" iTunes and iPod as a system that worked together, adding Jonathan Ive's designs, and marketing it all brilliantly. He wasn't sitting at his desk banging his head against the wall trying to force an idea out of the universe.
Image via CrunchBase
That is from a very nice (and personal) post about creativity by Dan Pallotta on the HBR blog.
