> Maybe it's better to have strong opinions, even if some are wrong, than to just throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks.I had an epiphany the other day that the secret of life is being able to simultaneously hold-believe-do contradictory ideas -- micro-applying whichever is apt for the immediate task.
Apple / Jobs history isn't something I'd consider myself well-versed in, but both of your points seemed to be present and required.
Having a maniacal dedication to a product during development (ie strong opinions), while also being willing to amortize risk over many project and ultimately call a failure in consumer acceptance a failure (ie see what sticks), seems as apt a description of the "secret sauce" as anything.
Google's problem is that they seem to fundamental believe there's a RIGHT way to do something (as engineers do). When for many things, there are a lot of right ways and its intangibles that cause a product to succeed or fail in the market place (aka taste, as artists do).
Obviously generalizing over a company as large as Google, but you see it when the market pushes back against their offerings. It seems like there's a core cognitive dissonance (eg with the Chrome UI simplification) because they're damn sure they built it "right."
Facebook, for all their cool tech, seems to be suffering from the Soviet problem. Reward by the numbers, and teams reporting up to you will come up with numbers.
I'm surprised the article attributes to top-down dictates (skew the ad numbers in Facebook's favor) what the Soviet Union learned in the 70s and 80s -- ask an impossible or overly difficult thing, and there will be bottom-up metric fabrication in response.