“Simple is harder than complex,” said Steve Jobs, the acknowledged master of simplicity in product design. “Once you get there, you can move mountains.” Jobs spent his career trying to get his thinking “clean” and cultivating a “beginner’s mind” so that he could make things simple. And he largely succeeded: Today, Apple is the second-largest company in the world by market capitalization, and its products are renowned for their sleek design and simplicity.
As Jobs notes, however, getting to “simple” isn’t easy. Every business, regardless of industry, operates in an environment of complexity — and that’s never been truer than it is today.
