AI transcript
0:00:10 I’m Guy Kawasaki.
0:00:14 Well, maybe for this episode I should be Guy Kawasaki.
0:00:17 But I’m Guy Kawasaki and this is Remarkable People.
0:00:21 We’re on a mission to make you remarkable.
0:00:24 Helping me in this episode is a very close friend.
0:00:31 Maherlène Delborg-Delphis. She is a serial technology CEO, executive consultant, and
0:00:38 board member. For over 30 years she has empowered organizations to reshape their future by creating
0:00:41 breakthrough platforms and applications.
0:00:47 Maherlène started her entrepreneurial journey in France. She founded a company called ACI.
0:00:55 She published the first relational database for Macintosh in 1985. In 1987, she became
0:01:01 one of the first European women to establish a tech company in Silicon Valley. I was co-founder
0:01:03 with her of this company.
0:01:09 She was also, by the way, instrumental in my writing career by encouraging me to write
0:01:13 the Macintosh Way, my very first book.
0:01:18 Maherlène holds a doctorate in philosophy from, and I’m going to let her say the name
0:01:23 of the school because I will never get that pronunciation right.
0:01:29 So you’re going to listen to her pronounce the school right now.
0:01:35 She was rewarded the French Legion of Honor in 2018, the highest order of merit for military
0:01:37 and civil accomplishments.
0:01:43 Maherlène has served as CEO for companies such as exemplary software, BRICS Logic, and
0:01:49 Talent Circles. In addition to these achievements, Maherlène has written a new book. It’s called
0:01:56 Beyond Eureka, The Rocky Roads to Innovating. It’s a remarkably executed explanation of
0:02:01 innovation and entrepreneurship. I had the honor of writing the Ford for this book.
0:02:08 I’m Guy Kawasaki. This is Remarkable People, and now here is the remarkable Maherlène
0:02:14 Del Borde Del Fice.
0:02:18 What is the French Legion of Honor Award?
0:02:24 The French Legion of Honor is the highest civil and military honor that you can deserve
0:02:35 for your outstanding action of what you have done. So it was created by Napoleon, I think.
0:02:39 So it’s for Remarkable People.
0:02:42 And how does one win that award?
0:02:50 You are nominated by people, and actually I don’t really know how it came to me. I think
0:02:57 I was nominated by one of the French consul, Pierre-François Mauret, who used to be a
0:03:05 consul, a remarkable consul in San Francisco. And he came from the same school as I was,
0:03:12 L’École Normale Supérieure. And he’s a phenomenal Latinist, by the way.
0:03:17 And after you win this award, what happens? I mean, when you fly into Charles de Gaulle,
0:03:20 they just walk you through customs, or what happens?
0:03:27 No, nothing happens. It’s really a personal honor. It’s not a stage. It’s a prestigious,
0:03:32 but low-key honor. And you don’t strut around and say, “Hey, I’m a member of the Legion
0:03:39 of Honor,” and whatnot. No, you don’t do that. It’s very private, in a way. It’s both very
0:03:46 public, because you are the list of people who have been honored. But it’s not something
0:03:50 that you shout about that much.
0:03:51 Oh, okay.
0:03:53 So, I’m so surprised you asked this question.
0:03:57 Well, I’m curious. Obviously, I could Google it, but I want to know from somebody who actually
0:04:02 won it. On this podcast, we’ve interviewed a couple people who have won the MacArthur
0:04:07 Fellowship, Angela Duckworth and Stephen Wolfram. So, I asked them what that like, too. And
0:04:11 then we actually interviewed the woman who used to run that program to find out how it
0:04:12 works.
0:04:18 It’s in a way similar. And these people don’t go around saying, “Hey, here I am,” and so
0:04:19 forth.
0:04:23 When you receive an award, the secret is being very humble.
0:04:28 I’m waiting for the MacArthur Fellowship for podcasting. So, that’s my goal in life.
0:04:30 But you have to be nominated.
0:04:37 All right. So, more on target for what you really want to talk about. Right. So, let’s
0:04:39 start with an easy question.
0:04:44 I want you to describe Was an inventor or an innovator?
0:04:55 I think he was first an inventor and he became an innovator. The difference is that when
0:05:03 you focus on the invention, you focus on the how-to. When you speak of innovation, you
0:05:12 make sure that you insert your invention into a context, a social background, into a market.
0:05:19 And I think that Was has this double characteristic. He has this double talent because he was an
0:05:27 amazing engineer. That’s true. But he also understood that he was going to have users.
0:05:32 So he was probably helped by Steve Jobs to understand that a market is very important.
0:05:39 You have to live to survive. It’s not enough to do a great product. You have to stage it.
0:05:46 And so, I think that the duo, Was and Steve Jobs was pretty amazing. But I think that
0:05:54 Was learned what an innovator was thanks to, through capillarity, basically, through his
0:05:59 relationship with Steve Jobs. This is the way I perceive it. I hope I’m right.
0:06:05 And you would say Steve was innovator, purely an innovator, not an inventor.
0:06:12 Yes. I think that usually people speak of inventor or invention because it sounds more
0:06:20 prestigious. It used to, at least. In reality, an innovator is, I believe, more incredible
0:06:27 than an inventor. An inventor focused on one domain. And somebody like Steve Jobs was
0:06:36 able to aggregate several domains and basically used the world as a big store of possibilities.
0:06:43 And so, he was able to dramatize, sometimes I say, theatricalize, what was around him.
0:06:51 And he is a phenomenal innovator. So, of course, he had patents over 400. But he didn’t write
0:06:58 those patents himself, okay? And it’s still prestigious to have patents. But he is an
0:07:04 amazing innovator. Now, does it make sense to you? You knew him better than I did.
0:07:10 Not necessarily. I think the world is full of people who think they knew Steve Jobs.
0:07:17 And they didn’t. You knew it better than most. For better, for worse, than you did.
0:07:23 I was inside the reality distortion field, so it’s not clear that I knew what I was
0:07:30 seeing. Yes, but you know what? I think you’re right. You were inside the reality distortion
0:07:39 field. But this is also how innovation operates. You have to believe that the world will bend
0:07:47 to your will to actually do stuff. And it doesn’t necessarily happen. And you then have
0:07:53 to adjust to the world. But you have to be in a sort of reality distortion field. It
0:08:01 may not reach the dimensions that Steve Jobs gave to this, okay? But you have to somehow.
0:08:07 So aren’t you saying in a sense that innovators, they’re on the spectrum or they’re on some
0:08:19 in a way? Yeah, I wouldn’t be that excessive, but they have to be very realistic, but move
0:08:24 away from reality a little bit, because they have to come back to reality, okay? Because
0:08:31 otherwise people are not going to buy their stuff. Okay. So it’s a very strange dance
0:08:40 between reality and reality. Now, it seems to me that you use the term innovator and
0:08:48 entrepreneur interchangeably. And I was actually surprised at that because I think you can
0:08:56 be an entrepreneur and not particularly innovative. So why do you use them interchangeably?
0:09:01 This is what I mentioned in the beginning of the book, okay? And I, given that it’s
0:09:08 about innovation, I assume that I was speaking of innovative entrepreneurs only because you
0:09:14 are right. You can be an entrepreneur and you don’t necessarily innovate. When you create
0:09:21 a pizza in your neighborhood, you don’t necessarily innovate. So in practice, given that the word
0:09:28 entrepreneur is more often used than the word innovator, so I use them interchangeably. But
0:09:34 in the beginning of the book, I put a caveat, meaning why do I use entrepreneurs innovator?
0:09:41 And do you think that every innovator is an entrepreneur? I mean, by definition, because
0:09:47 you’re not just an inventor, you’re also trying to take it to the market and make it a product
0:09:55 or a service that exists and is sold and used. So that’s when you cross the line between invention
0:10:01 and innovation slash entrepreneurship. Yes, most innovators try to be entrepreneurs, try to build
0:10:09 a company. It doesn’t mean that we’ll necessarily succeed because when you innovate, you believe
0:10:17 that you have a market. But how well do you evaluate the ability to have this market?
0:10:26 Because you assume that people will need it. You assume that people will expect you. And for most
0:10:34 innovators, actually, customers don’t expect us or they find out about us when we are almost dead.
0:10:43 That’s think of general magic. Innovators are entrepreneurs, always. Because they want to
0:10:50 push something on the market. The reality is that between what we hope that people will adopt,
0:10:59 and the fact that they will adopt it, there can be a huge gap. And there can be a long time.
0:11:08 So general magic was a very innovative enterprise and built by extraordinary people.
0:11:14 The market was not ready. Some aspect of the technology was not completely mature.
0:11:22 And at the time they were getting it almost, it was too late. So that’s why I would say that these
0:11:31 innovators who fail but have done amazing things are trailblazers. Usually we speak of trailblazers
0:11:38 as the iconic figures, like the Steve Jobs and company. For me, all these people who clean the
0:11:49 brushes and build up the possibilities of more technologies and build up the path for others
0:11:55 are trailblazers. In reality, there are four more trailblazers in history than we believe.
0:12:04 All the people who created the PDAs and basically none survived, there are extraordinary trailblazers.
0:12:12 And you don’t need to be famous or to be remembered by history to be looked at as a trailblazer.
0:12:19 I would say that many of the big icons that we know are incredibly bright trail followers.
0:12:30 They follow what others have gone and they come at the right moment. They stage it the right way
0:12:37 so that people will be able to absorb them. So I always want to say to entrepreneurs, innovators,
0:12:44 that even if they fail, even if their company doesn’t survive, they probably have done
0:12:56 major things that people will leverage. So all the PDAs entrepreneurs basically paved the way for
0:13:06 things like the iPhone. Can’t you make the case then that being a trail follower or a fast trail
0:13:14 follower is a better strategy than being a trailblazer? We can make this case but the trail followers
0:13:22 arrive when there is enough invention and innovation within the domain when the domain has
0:13:30 reached a level of maturity. So the trail followers who are geniuses, don’t get me wrong, trail followers
0:13:38 are geniuses who understand who are able to aggregate all the components of a very large
0:13:48 landscape. For example, Edison is a genius. He’s also leveraging lots of research on electricity
0:13:59 that had been happening for I would say 60 years. He integrated this into a hall and make it a city
0:14:06 light. The same with Bell, okay? Graham Bell. He did not invent the telephone but he put together
0:14:12 all the pieces of the telephone and make it happen in a context where people could adopt it.
0:14:20 By that line of reasoning, you would say that Alan Kay and Doug Engelbart were the trailblazers
0:14:26 and Steve Jobs was the trail follower, right? He took the thoughts of Xerox Park and he actually
0:14:32 brought it to market. So are you saying Steve Jobs is a trail follower? Yes. But I don’t like
0:14:37 the word trail follower. It doesn’t sound as prestigious, right? It’s not like the French
0:14:44 Legion of Honor, no. Again, no. I rely upon you to find a good word. That’s why I didn’t use the
0:14:51 expression trail follower on my book. Those geniuses have a sense of dramaturgy. They are
0:14:59 stage directors. Maybe instead of trail follower, we should say trail director, okay? Multi-trail
0:15:08 director. I trust you will find a phenomenal word for trail follower. But my point really is
0:15:16 to render homage to the countless trailblazers. And the same with the pioneers. The pioneers
0:15:23 were the soldier who would go first on the front and they opened up the rest for the army,
0:15:30 the space for the army. So I would like the world trailblazers and pioneers to be
0:15:48 of a wider use than what it is and encompass more people. I’m sorry.
0:15:54 How would you judge Elon Musk? He is a phenomenal stage director.
0:16:04 And he put together lots of trends, just like Tim’s jobs, okay? He has not invented electric
0:16:10 vehicle or self-driving vehicles. The idea, the dream for self driverless vehicles started
0:16:16 with the advent of automobiles. But the technologies were not ready. And so at a given time,
0:16:26 things seems to come together. And the genius of these people is to see this happening
0:16:35 and call us things which were disparate, kind of scattered around. Maybe we should say trailblazers
0:16:44 and geniuses. Okay. I’d love to hear your opinion of the value and what people can learn from
0:16:51 Walter Isaacson’s and various other people’s biographies of a Steve Jobs or an Elon Musk.
0:16:55 What is there to learn from a biography from those kind of people?
0:17:01 For very good biographies, I have not read the Elon Musk biography, so I kind of speak, but I
0:17:08 have read the biography of Steve Jobs. What I like about biographies is that they are not
0:17:17 hagiographic narratives. There is always a kind of sympathy for the person you speak about. But
0:17:26 they usually explain more of the ups and downs of the career. Most of the time in business courses,
0:17:33 you give these geniuses as the example to follow. Without taking into account that
0:17:43 their path has been soonerous, complicated, and that in many respects, they have been lucky to.
0:17:52 They also have been unlucky. And so what I like about biographies, it tells the story of the
0:18:02 life of people and reintegrate genius within the vagaries of life with the minimal hagiographic
0:18:10 aspect. And so I prefer also older biographies done by people who are not part of the business
0:18:17 world. I love the biographies of Kodak. That’s why I selected Kodak, because he was recounting
0:18:26 the ups and downs of Kodak of George Eastman in a very factual, matter of fact, fashion.
0:18:33 Well, let me ask you something. So what do you think of books like Burn by Kara Swisher,
0:18:37 because she’s part of the industry and she’s writing about the industry?
0:18:44 This is the way, I have only started it, so I cannot speak in detail. This is the way she felt.
0:18:54 So I think it’s a testimony of how she perceived the world around her. And for this, I like this
0:19:02 approach. We may think, we may have opinions about how she perceives that, how she describes it,
0:19:09 but this is how she felt. And this by itself has value. And on top of this, she is a woman.
0:19:15 And things may reverberate in her mind slightly differently.
0:19:21 I would put that that’s mildly, yes, slightly differently, yes.
0:19:26 Okay, no, we have to respect these kind of initiatives.
0:19:33 When I read a book, I try to understand the mindset of the people who read the book.
0:19:39 And when I disagree, I tend to give them the benefit of the doubt.
0:19:45 Dare I ask, since you read Think Remarkable, what do you think our mindset was?
0:19:51 Oh, this is really a book I love. Do you know that?
0:19:57 And I like it because it’s a summary of our life. It’s your perception of the world.
0:20:09 It’s actually not judgmental. And it’s trying to help people build their own personality
0:20:16 and put it together. And so that we are actually very diverse. We are a multiplicity of people.
0:20:24 I really like this book. And it’s so much better than any self-help book because it’s not normative.
0:20:27 I don’t know what normative means in that sense.
0:20:33 You’re not telling people you should do this, you should do that.
0:20:41 You show them example of people who have done this and that. And then it’s up to us to say,
0:20:47 oh, maybe I could do this too. Okay. So from now on, when people tell me,
0:20:51 ask me to describe the book, I’m going to say it’s not normative and I’m going to hope they
0:20:57 understand what I just said. Okay, come on. You are too hard on me. Okay. But this is an English
0:21:08 word, right? I don’t know. You don’t, okay. So you don’t give absolute norms. You give goals.
0:21:15 Okay. Because I don’t consider myself nor do I ever want to be a self-help guru.
0:21:20 I don’t want to be. Exactly. There’s never going to be a Guy Kawasaki, Madison,
0:21:26 Nismar course at the Ritz Carlton where you’re in five hours, we’re going to tell you how to be
0:21:31 remarkable. That ain’t going to happen ever. Maybe Madison will do it, but not with my blessing.
0:21:42 But there is one thing is you are able to have a real influence on people. And I’m in a very good
0:21:50 position to say it. You helped me so much by who you were when you joined the company.
0:21:58 When we started the company together, I learned so much by capillarity. You didn’t tell me you
0:22:03 should do this and should do that. Even though you were probably more dogmatic at the time and now,
0:22:08 but you let me learn from you. I think we learned from each other.
0:22:16 People listening, you should understand that because you wouldn’t know this. Marlon and I
0:22:22 started a company called ACIUS and we had a product called Fourth Dimension or a Macintosh
0:22:28 relational database. And it was because of her that I left Apple and I started this company.
0:22:36 And the rest is history. And also, let’s just set the record straight. It was because of her
0:22:42 encouragement that I wrote my first book, The Macintosh Way. Arguably, without Marlon in my life,
0:22:47 I would not have become a writer. That’s a distinct possibility.
0:22:57 Well, thank you. But I am forever grateful that you accepted that we would work together.
0:23:09 Because I had no idea of what the Silicon Valley ecosystem was. And it saved me probably years
0:23:20 of learning because you had it in your bones already. I learned so many American idioms because,
0:23:27 remember, at the time, my English was fairly academic. I have kept my accent, but my English,
0:23:38 I think, has become pretty decent. And I discovered Asia through you. I discovered the art of saying
0:23:46 yes before thinking no. This was very important. I do. I do. I default to yes. That is very
0:23:55 true. And this was very profound for me. Because as a European and especially French, we tend to
0:24:10 argue a lot. No. Here we are. But hearing you say yes when I knew you were not so sure was
0:24:17 incredibly important. Oh, okay. I don’t know if we’re going to keep this part in the podcast,
0:24:22 but while I think about it, I’m going to ask you two really silly questions, but I really want to
0:24:30 know. Okay. So I discussed the concept of, and I’m going to tell you these two things so that
0:24:37 you can tell me the absolute correct way to say these French words because I am not sure. Okay.
0:24:46 So number one is no bless oblige. Is that the right pronunciation? Yes. You have an American
0:24:52 accent, but it’s no bless oblige. Okay. Yes. And then we have this person in our book and in our
0:25:01 podcast who’s very artistic and very talented. His name is Halim Flowers. Yes. And many people
0:25:07 consider him the next generation Jean-Michel. And this is, I don’t know how to pronounce his
0:25:14 last name. Is it Basquiat? Yes. You would say, with a French accent, you would say Jean-Michel
0:25:20 Basquiat, who was an amazing artist. But you can say Jean-Michel Basquiat. Okay. American people
0:25:26 say Jean-Michel Basquiat. Because I live in great fear that I’ll say no bless oblige and Jean-Michel
0:25:31 Basquiat. Some place in some French intellectual city in the audience will say artist, dumbass American,
0:25:37 can’t even say French words. I disagree. People who would think this way would just be silly.
0:25:46 Okay. Back on track here. So now let’s talk about disruption. Do you think disruption is
0:25:53 overrated and it’s like a bullshit venture capital term? It’s definitely overrated. When you look
0:26:01 at the history of the world, it really picked up in the 80s and 90s mostly. The world was used
0:26:07 before in completely different contexts, not in business context. The theme is if you’re not
0:26:14 disruptive, you’re going to die because somebody’s going to do better than you do. Why would you need
0:26:23 such a big word to express something which is logical? If you don’t evolve, your company will
0:26:32 die. That’s about it. And it became sort of a cottage industry word for consultant. We are going
0:26:40 to help you disrupt the world. In reality, when you hear an entrepreneur telling you that he is
0:26:49 going to disrupt a field, either he is naive, or he doesn’t know the space. The evolution of
0:26:56 technology and the adoption of technology is really progressive. You’re not going to change
0:27:05 all behaviors overnight. You’re not going to kill IBM overnight if you want to kill IBM. It’s just
0:27:14 like very naive. And it’s a very negative view of innovation. In fact, innovators want to build
0:27:21 construct more than disrupt. What’s the point of disrupting somebody else? The point is to build
0:27:29 a business. And I do agree with Rony Mbarn beyond disruption. In my book, I discussed the concept
0:27:36 from a more historical standpoint because the notion of disruption appeared in the 1980s.
0:27:43 But the researcher using it did not think of it from the point of view of one company
0:27:50 disrupting the planet at all. And the idea of disruption also came in sociological research
0:27:57 to show that the evolution of the world history is not linear. It’s not cause and effect relationship.
0:28:06 So what happened is that Christensen used a term which was getting trendy in the 70s, 80s,
0:28:12 and use it into business. I think it’s a good consulting business term. It does not describe
0:28:22 the reality of how innovation happens. And if you, as an entrepreneur or an innovator,
0:28:28 your goal is to disrupt everything, you’re most likely to fail because people are not going to
0:28:36 buy you. So are you saying that when you mention Christensen, you’re referring to Clayton
0:28:42 Christensen and the innovators dilemma. So are you saying the innovators dilemma is not accurate
0:28:48 or you’re just saying that it’s mislabeled? I think it’s mislabeled. He gives interesting advice.
0:28:57 But like many business books, so you need to have a sort of grandiose term to strike the
0:29:06 mind of people and to build a school of idea when in reality, it’s a logical, interesting advice to
0:29:16 management in the same way as many other authors. We don’t need to have those big labels. And
0:29:21 certainly we don’t need entrepreneurs to think that they are going to be disruptive because first,
0:29:29 usually great things start small. You understand you’re talking to someone who’s
0:29:39 trying to make the word remarkable, just like the word disruption. The good thing is that
0:29:49 remarkable is more normal. To be remarkable, this is a word that you say in everyday life.
0:29:57 And so what you do is that you aggregate the various components of being remarkable.
0:30:03 But in everyday life, you say, oh, this is remarkable. This person is remarkable.
0:30:10 This book is remarkable. You show how the word remarkable has a wide range of meaning.
0:30:14 I must admit, I never use the word disruption. Never.
0:30:23 Okay, very good. So you make my point here. You don’t go around. You’re not going to buy
0:30:32 an ura ring because it disrupts Bulgaria. To your point, I don’t think people wake up in
0:30:40 the morning saying, God, I got to buy something disruptive. Exactly. In fact, you want to buy
0:30:46 something which is not disruptive, which is seductive. Yes. You want to be persuaded
0:30:55 to buy. You want to be brought into buying something. You want to charm, not to shock.
0:31:02 I knew it was inevitable to interview someone who’s French and we’d get to sex somehow.
0:31:14 And I would also make the case that you can only label things disruptive after the fact.
0:31:20 You can’t predict it. Exactly. This is an after the fact. I don’t see the point.
0:31:25 And if you say to a customer, it’s disruptive, they’re going to wait until other people adopt
0:31:30 the product because they don’t want to disrupt their business. So it’s a very negative view.
0:31:38 It has probably used it, but when I hear an interpreter tell me that it’s disruptive,
0:31:40 it’s usually that he doesn’t know the space very much.
0:31:48 You’re going to get my book and podcast banned inside of McKinsey, which if he keeps talking
0:31:57 about disruption being a bad word. It’s not a bad word. It’s a kind of filler word.
0:32:04 It’s just when people always use this kind of expression without knowing the origin
0:32:10 and the actual meaning, it becomes empty. I would say that it’s empty. People have to
0:32:16 say disruptive to look serious. That’s McKinsey. They don’t use it more than other people. I think
0:32:23 it’s just part of the lingo and one day when the people train in the 80s and 90s are going
0:32:29 to disappear, the world is going to disappear. Up next on Remarkable People. Most of the time
0:32:35 when we produce innovation, we think that what we do is so great that people will knock at our door
0:32:40 and buy it and drove. We forget that before we buy the next iPhone, we say, well, do I really
0:32:46 need one? And so we hesitate not because we are unable to make a decision without that’s cool,
0:32:53 but do I really need it? And so forth. We have to understand that people don’t operate at our speed.
0:33:03 Become a little more remarkable with each episode of Remarkable People.
0:33:07 It’s found on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
0:33:12 Welcome back to Remarkable People with Guy Kawasaki.
0:33:23 I would love to hear your opinion of how organizations can remain or sustain innovation
0:33:30 decades into. You point out that many companies are 50, 60, 70 years old and how do those companies
0:33:38 remain innovative? It’s very complicated, right? There is no one recipe, but usually
0:33:44 they hire people who can inform the upper management and they make sure that ideas are not
0:33:53 crushed or disappearing in the labyrinth of hierarchy. So that’s really the key. I think
0:34:00 that the minute you realize that innovation is about people and not about organization,
0:34:06 you start to take care of people. Organizations don’t crush innovation. People do crush innovation.
0:34:13 Power crushes innovation or fear crushes innovation, but sustaining innovation in
0:34:20 large corporation is possible. It’s completely possible. For example, think of Apple. We may
0:34:25 not always agree with what Apple has done over the years, but they have managed and this is an
0:34:34 old organization now. IBM, they are ups and downs, but they have managed it because they look for
0:34:42 talent. Look at Google. They have found talent everywhere and they acquire companies with a lot
0:34:48 of talent and they are able to maintain those talents, to keep those talents. The same with
0:34:54 Microsoft. This organization who are able to understand that innovation is linked to people
0:35:02 and crushed by people. Well, I mean, does it make sense? Not to get off on too much of a tangent,
0:35:09 but if people are the key like this, when societies or let’s say specific states, they seem to be
0:35:16 crushing people based on their race or their sexual orientation or something. It’s by these
0:35:22 superficial qualities of nothing to do with their ability to innovate. It seems to me that’s a
0:35:29 downward cycle there. This is definitely a downward cycle because if you look at Silicon
0:35:36 Valley, it’s white guys, but it’s a lot of Chinese and people from India. Let’s be realistic. We are
0:35:45 in a global world and talent can come from anywhere and from anybody, from any color, from any sexual
0:35:52 orientation. So all these qualifications, all these exclusionary processes are just absurd.
0:36:01 Basically, they are losing talent. Another thing that is going to maybe bad for the United States
0:36:09 and maybe other countries too, is the cost of universities because universities, laboratories
0:36:16 are the antechambers of innovation. So you have to train a large number of people
0:36:25 to basically emulate a lot of ideas, create a lot of ideas. So if you exclude people from
0:36:31 traditionally very effective university because of the cost, you may lose a lot of talent or they
0:36:37 may go back to their country. This is going to go off on another tangent, but I love to hear what
0:36:43 you say. Who do you consider more innovative? Steve Jobs or Elon Musk? I don’t tend to have
0:36:51 a hierarchy. I wouldn’t establish really a hierarchy between them. I only have preferences.
0:36:58 Okay. Who’s your preference? I prefer Steve Jobs. Why? Because I think he was
0:37:06 grateful to the environment he was in. And even though he was hard to deal with, I think that
0:37:12 his personality was more open to the world. Elon Musk is obviously an extraordinary man.
0:37:21 I’m disturbed by his radical positions and the risk of abuse of power. This is disturbing to me
0:37:27 because it’s more of a character issue, but it’s not because he’s an innovator. It’s more of a
0:37:34 character issue. I think Steve Jobs was provocative, could be probably very harsh with people,
0:37:45 but there was a personal integrity that is very meaningful. Okay. So I want to finish off with
0:37:52 your book specifically. Just give us the lessons of your book. In one question,
0:38:03 how do you get beyond Eureka? You work, you work, you work. You may succeed, you may restart,
0:38:11 you may pivot, but you move on continuously. That’s it? That’s the whole gist of it?
0:38:18 Yes. First off, I must tell people that you are the one who found this title beyond Eureka.
0:38:26 And very grateful about this. My point was that creators of companies who want to innovate have
0:38:33 to realize how difficult it is. And while I was trying to explain why it is difficult,
0:38:40 I want them to feel that they are not alone. Because most of the time, as an entrepreneur,
0:38:47 you feel lonely. You feel that if you don’t succeed, the world is going to look at you
0:38:57 in a decorative fashion. So what I did is make sure that I always illustrated that others went
0:39:06 through bad times, maybe some time even worse. I want to make sure that entrepreneurs understand
0:39:13 how hard it is to innovate. But I want also to make sure that they understand that they can
0:39:20 improvise, they can change that, they can be opportunistic, pragmatic, because others very
0:39:28 big names have done it before them. So I want to de-dramatize in many respects both success and
0:39:34 failure. I think that many people from the outside looking in think that the hard part
0:39:39 is coming up with the idea. And then once you come up with the idea, implementation is easy.
0:39:46 And my experience is it’s exactly the opposite. Exactly. I completely agree with that. Because
0:39:52 you get an idea when you work in a space, you see what the status of the space is,
0:39:57 and then you say, well, how come this works only like this? Let me try something else.
0:40:06 So you usually get ideas from a terrain where many ideas can germinate. So the ideas are pretty
0:40:13 easy to combine. And then when you have this idea, now how am I going to make it work? So you start
0:40:19 a company, so you learn how to manage a budget, how to raise money, how to hire people, what not.
0:40:24 And then the minute you have started a product, say, wow, who’s going to buy that stuff?
0:40:32 And this is the beginning of big headaches. So implementation, not of the rule of business,
0:40:38 but of the rule that will make people adopt your product is extraordinarily complicated
0:40:46 and challenging. Do you have any brilliant insights for us about adoption? Like, how do
0:40:51 you foster adoption? Because I think that’s what it all comes down to. I tell entrepreneurs all
0:41:00 the time, the only thing you need to remember is sales fixes everything. Yes. But you have sales
0:41:08 when you see how people can adopt. To have people adopt, you have to be progressively charming in
0:41:15 many respects. You have to first think how you, as a consumer, adopt product. Most of the time
0:41:22 when we produce innovation, we think that what we do is so great that people will knock at our door
0:41:29 and buy it and drove. We forget that before we buy the next iPhone, we say, well, do I really need
0:41:35 one? And so we hesitate, not because we are unable to make a decision without that school,
0:41:42 but do I really need it and so forth. We have to understand that people don’t operate at our
0:41:50 speed. That’s the first thing. Understand that customers are lazy. Even if they like the product,
0:41:57 logouts are not idiots. Simply, they don’t need the product or they are able to do without it.
0:42:04 Or they have different habits. To help adoption, you have to learn tolerance
0:42:11 of why people are not going to buy your product. You have to basically really do
0:42:18 a pre-water analysis. Find all the reasons why people are not going to buy you.
0:42:25 And then you have to also do everything possible to make sure that if they decide
0:42:34 to buy your product, the interface is going to be easy for them. And this is, by the way,
0:42:39 something I learned from you, my notion of interface. I had a tendency to look at the
0:42:44 technology. What I really learned from you when I came to this, to a valley, is the importance
0:42:52 of the interface, even the color of a package. And when I was working on the history of technology
0:42:59 for this book, I discovered that probably the genius of interface, the first big genius of
0:43:08 interface was George Isman at Kodak. Oh, yes, yes. And I think that everybody was working on better
0:43:16 ways to make photography happen, democratize photography. And all of a sudden, there was
0:43:24 somebody who said, you can click on the button, you being anybody. So I think he built the concept
0:43:30 of interface that pervaded everything since then. That reminds me of something that maybe in your
0:43:39 research, you have a better understanding of, which is in 1975, Steve Sassen of Kodak invented
0:43:46 digital photography and obviously did not embrace it. So what happened there? There was a very
0:43:51 interesting interview that he gave to the New York Times at the time.
0:44:01 It was killing the cash cow. And probably the upper management of Kodak had aged too much or the
0:44:08 board at age too much. So they could not project themselves 10 years, 20 years down the road.
0:44:17 They did not think of what their grandchildren would want to use. They had arrived. They were not
0:44:24 stupid people. They were simply stuck with themselves with their age. I think it was generational.
0:44:32 All right. So I have to tell you that I wrote a book called The Art of the Star 2.0, which goes
0:44:41 over the basic mechanisms of how to start a company. But I do not at all address with any kind of
0:44:48 quality that your book does. I think if you’re an entrepreneur listening to this or you’re thinking
0:44:54 of being an entrepreneur, you only need two books, The Art of the Star 2.0 and Beyond Eureka. Because
0:45:00 they’ll tell you how to set it up and how to get past the idea. And that’s what it takes to be a
0:45:07 successful entrepreneur. Thank you so much. And I love The Art of the Star 2.0, which has translated
0:45:15 into French, the two versions of them. So oh, and if nothing else now, I know with great confidence
0:45:22 that I can use the French name and the French concept of Noblesse Oblige and I can go in.
0:45:30 I have one more question about Noblesse Oblige. I have a negative reaction to the Noblesse
0:45:38 part of Noblesse Oblige because I do not like the concept of nobility in the sense that you’re
0:45:44 born into the royal family. And because you’re a noble and you realize because you’re such a
0:45:49 wonderful person, you have this obligation that you’re going to go help the peons. So I’m a noble
0:45:56 person who’s helping peons. Am I like reading too much into the concept of Noblesse Oblige that
0:46:05 it’s this like kind of elitist wonderfulness? It is elitist, it is elitist, but maybe not
0:46:14 elit by birth. The notion of Noblesse Oblige is respecting the sense of honor. It could be applied
0:46:24 to anybody in the scale of being nobles, even lowborn nobles. When you say be a gentleman
0:46:32 to somebody, you say Noblesse Oblige. It’s a code of honor. Okay. So it’s not nearly as negative
0:46:41 as I was thinking. It’s not at all negative. Oh, I gotta change my speech. I’m glad I asked.
0:46:51 It’s not negative at all. It’s behave honorably. Okay. There is the idea of privilege, but it really
0:46:59 emphasizes the responsibility of privilege. The same way, be a gentleman. You are a gentleman
0:47:06 except your responsibility and do the right thing. God, I got so much cleared up, I can go forth.
0:47:15 I’ll give you this opportunity. Just pitch your book, tell people why they should buy your book.
0:47:26 Read my book if you want to be encouraged all the way in the difficult path you have chosen,
0:47:33 because you are not alone. I hope you enjoyed this episode with Marlène Del Borg der Fies.
0:47:40 She was an enormous influence in my career, both as a tech executive as well as a writer.
0:47:45 If nothing else, I hope you understand the concept of Noblesse Oblige.
0:47:53 May we all fulfill our Noblesse Oblige. Let’s thank the crew. First, Madison Neismar. Madison
0:47:59 Neismar is the producer of this podcast and co-author with me of Think Remarkable. Then there’s the
0:48:06 amazing sound design engineers, Jeff C. and Shannon Hernandez, and the rest of the crew, Alexis Nishimura,
0:48:13 Fallen Yates, and Louise Magana. We are the Remarkable People team. We’re on a mission to
0:48:18 make you Remarkable. Now I’m going to give you a little bit of homework. Check out Marlène’s book.
0:48:25 It’s called Beyond Eureka. And while you’re doing that, check out our book, Think Remarkable.
0:48:33 We are truly on a mission to make you Remarkable. Until next time, Mahalo and Aloha.
0:48:39 This is Remarkable People.
0:00:14 Well, maybe for this episode I should be Guy Kawasaki.
0:00:17 But I’m Guy Kawasaki and this is Remarkable People.
0:00:21 We’re on a mission to make you remarkable.
0:00:24 Helping me in this episode is a very close friend.
0:00:31 Maherlène Delborg-Delphis. She is a serial technology CEO, executive consultant, and
0:00:38 board member. For over 30 years she has empowered organizations to reshape their future by creating
0:00:41 breakthrough platforms and applications.
0:00:47 Maherlène started her entrepreneurial journey in France. She founded a company called ACI.
0:00:55 She published the first relational database for Macintosh in 1985. In 1987, she became
0:01:01 one of the first European women to establish a tech company in Silicon Valley. I was co-founder
0:01:03 with her of this company.
0:01:09 She was also, by the way, instrumental in my writing career by encouraging me to write
0:01:13 the Macintosh Way, my very first book.
0:01:18 Maherlène holds a doctorate in philosophy from, and I’m going to let her say the name
0:01:23 of the school because I will never get that pronunciation right.
0:01:29 So you’re going to listen to her pronounce the school right now.
0:01:35 She was rewarded the French Legion of Honor in 2018, the highest order of merit for military
0:01:37 and civil accomplishments.
0:01:43 Maherlène has served as CEO for companies such as exemplary software, BRICS Logic, and
0:01:49 Talent Circles. In addition to these achievements, Maherlène has written a new book. It’s called
0:01:56 Beyond Eureka, The Rocky Roads to Innovating. It’s a remarkably executed explanation of
0:02:01 innovation and entrepreneurship. I had the honor of writing the Ford for this book.
0:02:08 I’m Guy Kawasaki. This is Remarkable People, and now here is the remarkable Maherlène
0:02:14 Del Borde Del Fice.
0:02:18 What is the French Legion of Honor Award?
0:02:24 The French Legion of Honor is the highest civil and military honor that you can deserve
0:02:35 for your outstanding action of what you have done. So it was created by Napoleon, I think.
0:02:39 So it’s for Remarkable People.
0:02:42 And how does one win that award?
0:02:50 You are nominated by people, and actually I don’t really know how it came to me. I think
0:02:57 I was nominated by one of the French consul, Pierre-François Mauret, who used to be a
0:03:05 consul, a remarkable consul in San Francisco. And he came from the same school as I was,
0:03:12 L’École Normale Supérieure. And he’s a phenomenal Latinist, by the way.
0:03:17 And after you win this award, what happens? I mean, when you fly into Charles de Gaulle,
0:03:20 they just walk you through customs, or what happens?
0:03:27 No, nothing happens. It’s really a personal honor. It’s not a stage. It’s a prestigious,
0:03:32 but low-key honor. And you don’t strut around and say, “Hey, I’m a member of the Legion
0:03:39 of Honor,” and whatnot. No, you don’t do that. It’s very private, in a way. It’s both very
0:03:46 public, because you are the list of people who have been honored. But it’s not something
0:03:50 that you shout about that much.
0:03:51 Oh, okay.
0:03:53 So, I’m so surprised you asked this question.
0:03:57 Well, I’m curious. Obviously, I could Google it, but I want to know from somebody who actually
0:04:02 won it. On this podcast, we’ve interviewed a couple people who have won the MacArthur
0:04:07 Fellowship, Angela Duckworth and Stephen Wolfram. So, I asked them what that like, too. And
0:04:11 then we actually interviewed the woman who used to run that program to find out how it
0:04:12 works.
0:04:18 It’s in a way similar. And these people don’t go around saying, “Hey, here I am,” and so
0:04:19 forth.
0:04:23 When you receive an award, the secret is being very humble.
0:04:28 I’m waiting for the MacArthur Fellowship for podcasting. So, that’s my goal in life.
0:04:30 But you have to be nominated.
0:04:37 All right. So, more on target for what you really want to talk about. Right. So, let’s
0:04:39 start with an easy question.
0:04:44 I want you to describe Was an inventor or an innovator?
0:04:55 I think he was first an inventor and he became an innovator. The difference is that when
0:05:03 you focus on the invention, you focus on the how-to. When you speak of innovation, you
0:05:12 make sure that you insert your invention into a context, a social background, into a market.
0:05:19 And I think that Was has this double characteristic. He has this double talent because he was an
0:05:27 amazing engineer. That’s true. But he also understood that he was going to have users.
0:05:32 So he was probably helped by Steve Jobs to understand that a market is very important.
0:05:39 You have to live to survive. It’s not enough to do a great product. You have to stage it.
0:05:46 And so, I think that the duo, Was and Steve Jobs was pretty amazing. But I think that
0:05:54 Was learned what an innovator was thanks to, through capillarity, basically, through his
0:05:59 relationship with Steve Jobs. This is the way I perceive it. I hope I’m right.
0:06:05 And you would say Steve was innovator, purely an innovator, not an inventor.
0:06:12 Yes. I think that usually people speak of inventor or invention because it sounds more
0:06:20 prestigious. It used to, at least. In reality, an innovator is, I believe, more incredible
0:06:27 than an inventor. An inventor focused on one domain. And somebody like Steve Jobs was
0:06:36 able to aggregate several domains and basically used the world as a big store of possibilities.
0:06:43 And so, he was able to dramatize, sometimes I say, theatricalize, what was around him.
0:06:51 And he is a phenomenal innovator. So, of course, he had patents over 400. But he didn’t write
0:06:58 those patents himself, okay? And it’s still prestigious to have patents. But he is an
0:07:04 amazing innovator. Now, does it make sense to you? You knew him better than I did.
0:07:10 Not necessarily. I think the world is full of people who think they knew Steve Jobs.
0:07:17 And they didn’t. You knew it better than most. For better, for worse, than you did.
0:07:23 I was inside the reality distortion field, so it’s not clear that I knew what I was
0:07:30 seeing. Yes, but you know what? I think you’re right. You were inside the reality distortion
0:07:39 field. But this is also how innovation operates. You have to believe that the world will bend
0:07:47 to your will to actually do stuff. And it doesn’t necessarily happen. And you then have
0:07:53 to adjust to the world. But you have to be in a sort of reality distortion field. It
0:08:01 may not reach the dimensions that Steve Jobs gave to this, okay? But you have to somehow.
0:08:07 So aren’t you saying in a sense that innovators, they’re on the spectrum or they’re on some
0:08:19 in a way? Yeah, I wouldn’t be that excessive, but they have to be very realistic, but move
0:08:24 away from reality a little bit, because they have to come back to reality, okay? Because
0:08:31 otherwise people are not going to buy their stuff. Okay. So it’s a very strange dance
0:08:40 between reality and reality. Now, it seems to me that you use the term innovator and
0:08:48 entrepreneur interchangeably. And I was actually surprised at that because I think you can
0:08:56 be an entrepreneur and not particularly innovative. So why do you use them interchangeably?
0:09:01 This is what I mentioned in the beginning of the book, okay? And I, given that it’s
0:09:08 about innovation, I assume that I was speaking of innovative entrepreneurs only because you
0:09:14 are right. You can be an entrepreneur and you don’t necessarily innovate. When you create
0:09:21 a pizza in your neighborhood, you don’t necessarily innovate. So in practice, given that the word
0:09:28 entrepreneur is more often used than the word innovator, so I use them interchangeably. But
0:09:34 in the beginning of the book, I put a caveat, meaning why do I use entrepreneurs innovator?
0:09:41 And do you think that every innovator is an entrepreneur? I mean, by definition, because
0:09:47 you’re not just an inventor, you’re also trying to take it to the market and make it a product
0:09:55 or a service that exists and is sold and used. So that’s when you cross the line between invention
0:10:01 and innovation slash entrepreneurship. Yes, most innovators try to be entrepreneurs, try to build
0:10:09 a company. It doesn’t mean that we’ll necessarily succeed because when you innovate, you believe
0:10:17 that you have a market. But how well do you evaluate the ability to have this market?
0:10:26 Because you assume that people will need it. You assume that people will expect you. And for most
0:10:34 innovators, actually, customers don’t expect us or they find out about us when we are almost dead.
0:10:43 That’s think of general magic. Innovators are entrepreneurs, always. Because they want to
0:10:50 push something on the market. The reality is that between what we hope that people will adopt,
0:10:59 and the fact that they will adopt it, there can be a huge gap. And there can be a long time.
0:11:08 So general magic was a very innovative enterprise and built by extraordinary people.
0:11:14 The market was not ready. Some aspect of the technology was not completely mature.
0:11:22 And at the time they were getting it almost, it was too late. So that’s why I would say that these
0:11:31 innovators who fail but have done amazing things are trailblazers. Usually we speak of trailblazers
0:11:38 as the iconic figures, like the Steve Jobs and company. For me, all these people who clean the
0:11:49 brushes and build up the possibilities of more technologies and build up the path for others
0:11:55 are trailblazers. In reality, there are four more trailblazers in history than we believe.
0:12:04 All the people who created the PDAs and basically none survived, there are extraordinary trailblazers.
0:12:12 And you don’t need to be famous or to be remembered by history to be looked at as a trailblazer.
0:12:19 I would say that many of the big icons that we know are incredibly bright trail followers.
0:12:30 They follow what others have gone and they come at the right moment. They stage it the right way
0:12:37 so that people will be able to absorb them. So I always want to say to entrepreneurs, innovators,
0:12:44 that even if they fail, even if their company doesn’t survive, they probably have done
0:12:56 major things that people will leverage. So all the PDAs entrepreneurs basically paved the way for
0:13:06 things like the iPhone. Can’t you make the case then that being a trail follower or a fast trail
0:13:14 follower is a better strategy than being a trailblazer? We can make this case but the trail followers
0:13:22 arrive when there is enough invention and innovation within the domain when the domain has
0:13:30 reached a level of maturity. So the trail followers who are geniuses, don’t get me wrong, trail followers
0:13:38 are geniuses who understand who are able to aggregate all the components of a very large
0:13:48 landscape. For example, Edison is a genius. He’s also leveraging lots of research on electricity
0:13:59 that had been happening for I would say 60 years. He integrated this into a hall and make it a city
0:14:06 light. The same with Bell, okay? Graham Bell. He did not invent the telephone but he put together
0:14:12 all the pieces of the telephone and make it happen in a context where people could adopt it.
0:14:20 By that line of reasoning, you would say that Alan Kay and Doug Engelbart were the trailblazers
0:14:26 and Steve Jobs was the trail follower, right? He took the thoughts of Xerox Park and he actually
0:14:32 brought it to market. So are you saying Steve Jobs is a trail follower? Yes. But I don’t like
0:14:37 the word trail follower. It doesn’t sound as prestigious, right? It’s not like the French
0:14:44 Legion of Honor, no. Again, no. I rely upon you to find a good word. That’s why I didn’t use the
0:14:51 expression trail follower on my book. Those geniuses have a sense of dramaturgy. They are
0:14:59 stage directors. Maybe instead of trail follower, we should say trail director, okay? Multi-trail
0:15:08 director. I trust you will find a phenomenal word for trail follower. But my point really is
0:15:16 to render homage to the countless trailblazers. And the same with the pioneers. The pioneers
0:15:23 were the soldier who would go first on the front and they opened up the rest for the army,
0:15:30 the space for the army. So I would like the world trailblazers and pioneers to be
0:15:48 of a wider use than what it is and encompass more people. I’m sorry.
0:15:54 How would you judge Elon Musk? He is a phenomenal stage director.
0:16:04 And he put together lots of trends, just like Tim’s jobs, okay? He has not invented electric
0:16:10 vehicle or self-driving vehicles. The idea, the dream for self driverless vehicles started
0:16:16 with the advent of automobiles. But the technologies were not ready. And so at a given time,
0:16:26 things seems to come together. And the genius of these people is to see this happening
0:16:35 and call us things which were disparate, kind of scattered around. Maybe we should say trailblazers
0:16:44 and geniuses. Okay. I’d love to hear your opinion of the value and what people can learn from
0:16:51 Walter Isaacson’s and various other people’s biographies of a Steve Jobs or an Elon Musk.
0:16:55 What is there to learn from a biography from those kind of people?
0:17:01 For very good biographies, I have not read the Elon Musk biography, so I kind of speak, but I
0:17:08 have read the biography of Steve Jobs. What I like about biographies is that they are not
0:17:17 hagiographic narratives. There is always a kind of sympathy for the person you speak about. But
0:17:26 they usually explain more of the ups and downs of the career. Most of the time in business courses,
0:17:33 you give these geniuses as the example to follow. Without taking into account that
0:17:43 their path has been soonerous, complicated, and that in many respects, they have been lucky to.
0:17:52 They also have been unlucky. And so what I like about biographies, it tells the story of the
0:18:02 life of people and reintegrate genius within the vagaries of life with the minimal hagiographic
0:18:10 aspect. And so I prefer also older biographies done by people who are not part of the business
0:18:17 world. I love the biographies of Kodak. That’s why I selected Kodak, because he was recounting
0:18:26 the ups and downs of Kodak of George Eastman in a very factual, matter of fact, fashion.
0:18:33 Well, let me ask you something. So what do you think of books like Burn by Kara Swisher,
0:18:37 because she’s part of the industry and she’s writing about the industry?
0:18:44 This is the way, I have only started it, so I cannot speak in detail. This is the way she felt.
0:18:54 So I think it’s a testimony of how she perceived the world around her. And for this, I like this
0:19:02 approach. We may think, we may have opinions about how she perceives that, how she describes it,
0:19:09 but this is how she felt. And this by itself has value. And on top of this, she is a woman.
0:19:15 And things may reverberate in her mind slightly differently.
0:19:21 I would put that that’s mildly, yes, slightly differently, yes.
0:19:26 Okay, no, we have to respect these kind of initiatives.
0:19:33 When I read a book, I try to understand the mindset of the people who read the book.
0:19:39 And when I disagree, I tend to give them the benefit of the doubt.
0:19:45 Dare I ask, since you read Think Remarkable, what do you think our mindset was?
0:19:51 Oh, this is really a book I love. Do you know that?
0:19:57 And I like it because it’s a summary of our life. It’s your perception of the world.
0:20:09 It’s actually not judgmental. And it’s trying to help people build their own personality
0:20:16 and put it together. And so that we are actually very diverse. We are a multiplicity of people.
0:20:24 I really like this book. And it’s so much better than any self-help book because it’s not normative.
0:20:27 I don’t know what normative means in that sense.
0:20:33 You’re not telling people you should do this, you should do that.
0:20:41 You show them example of people who have done this and that. And then it’s up to us to say,
0:20:47 oh, maybe I could do this too. Okay. So from now on, when people tell me,
0:20:51 ask me to describe the book, I’m going to say it’s not normative and I’m going to hope they
0:20:57 understand what I just said. Okay, come on. You are too hard on me. Okay. But this is an English
0:21:08 word, right? I don’t know. You don’t, okay. So you don’t give absolute norms. You give goals.
0:21:15 Okay. Because I don’t consider myself nor do I ever want to be a self-help guru.
0:21:20 I don’t want to be. Exactly. There’s never going to be a Guy Kawasaki, Madison,
0:21:26 Nismar course at the Ritz Carlton where you’re in five hours, we’re going to tell you how to be
0:21:31 remarkable. That ain’t going to happen ever. Maybe Madison will do it, but not with my blessing.
0:21:42 But there is one thing is you are able to have a real influence on people. And I’m in a very good
0:21:50 position to say it. You helped me so much by who you were when you joined the company.
0:21:58 When we started the company together, I learned so much by capillarity. You didn’t tell me you
0:22:03 should do this and should do that. Even though you were probably more dogmatic at the time and now,
0:22:08 but you let me learn from you. I think we learned from each other.
0:22:16 People listening, you should understand that because you wouldn’t know this. Marlon and I
0:22:22 started a company called ACIUS and we had a product called Fourth Dimension or a Macintosh
0:22:28 relational database. And it was because of her that I left Apple and I started this company.
0:22:36 And the rest is history. And also, let’s just set the record straight. It was because of her
0:22:42 encouragement that I wrote my first book, The Macintosh Way. Arguably, without Marlon in my life,
0:22:47 I would not have become a writer. That’s a distinct possibility.
0:22:57 Well, thank you. But I am forever grateful that you accepted that we would work together.
0:23:09 Because I had no idea of what the Silicon Valley ecosystem was. And it saved me probably years
0:23:20 of learning because you had it in your bones already. I learned so many American idioms because,
0:23:27 remember, at the time, my English was fairly academic. I have kept my accent, but my English,
0:23:38 I think, has become pretty decent. And I discovered Asia through you. I discovered the art of saying
0:23:46 yes before thinking no. This was very important. I do. I do. I default to yes. That is very
0:23:55 true. And this was very profound for me. Because as a European and especially French, we tend to
0:24:10 argue a lot. No. Here we are. But hearing you say yes when I knew you were not so sure was
0:24:17 incredibly important. Oh, okay. I don’t know if we’re going to keep this part in the podcast,
0:24:22 but while I think about it, I’m going to ask you two really silly questions, but I really want to
0:24:30 know. Okay. So I discussed the concept of, and I’m going to tell you these two things so that
0:24:37 you can tell me the absolute correct way to say these French words because I am not sure. Okay.
0:24:46 So number one is no bless oblige. Is that the right pronunciation? Yes. You have an American
0:24:52 accent, but it’s no bless oblige. Okay. Yes. And then we have this person in our book and in our
0:25:01 podcast who’s very artistic and very talented. His name is Halim Flowers. Yes. And many people
0:25:07 consider him the next generation Jean-Michel. And this is, I don’t know how to pronounce his
0:25:14 last name. Is it Basquiat? Yes. You would say, with a French accent, you would say Jean-Michel
0:25:20 Basquiat, who was an amazing artist. But you can say Jean-Michel Basquiat. Okay. American people
0:25:26 say Jean-Michel Basquiat. Because I live in great fear that I’ll say no bless oblige and Jean-Michel
0:25:31 Basquiat. Some place in some French intellectual city in the audience will say artist, dumbass American,
0:25:37 can’t even say French words. I disagree. People who would think this way would just be silly.
0:25:46 Okay. Back on track here. So now let’s talk about disruption. Do you think disruption is
0:25:53 overrated and it’s like a bullshit venture capital term? It’s definitely overrated. When you look
0:26:01 at the history of the world, it really picked up in the 80s and 90s mostly. The world was used
0:26:07 before in completely different contexts, not in business context. The theme is if you’re not
0:26:14 disruptive, you’re going to die because somebody’s going to do better than you do. Why would you need
0:26:23 such a big word to express something which is logical? If you don’t evolve, your company will
0:26:32 die. That’s about it. And it became sort of a cottage industry word for consultant. We are going
0:26:40 to help you disrupt the world. In reality, when you hear an entrepreneur telling you that he is
0:26:49 going to disrupt a field, either he is naive, or he doesn’t know the space. The evolution of
0:26:56 technology and the adoption of technology is really progressive. You’re not going to change
0:27:05 all behaviors overnight. You’re not going to kill IBM overnight if you want to kill IBM. It’s just
0:27:14 like very naive. And it’s a very negative view of innovation. In fact, innovators want to build
0:27:21 construct more than disrupt. What’s the point of disrupting somebody else? The point is to build
0:27:29 a business. And I do agree with Rony Mbarn beyond disruption. In my book, I discussed the concept
0:27:36 from a more historical standpoint because the notion of disruption appeared in the 1980s.
0:27:43 But the researcher using it did not think of it from the point of view of one company
0:27:50 disrupting the planet at all. And the idea of disruption also came in sociological research
0:27:57 to show that the evolution of the world history is not linear. It’s not cause and effect relationship.
0:28:06 So what happened is that Christensen used a term which was getting trendy in the 70s, 80s,
0:28:12 and use it into business. I think it’s a good consulting business term. It does not describe
0:28:22 the reality of how innovation happens. And if you, as an entrepreneur or an innovator,
0:28:28 your goal is to disrupt everything, you’re most likely to fail because people are not going to
0:28:36 buy you. So are you saying that when you mention Christensen, you’re referring to Clayton
0:28:42 Christensen and the innovators dilemma. So are you saying the innovators dilemma is not accurate
0:28:48 or you’re just saying that it’s mislabeled? I think it’s mislabeled. He gives interesting advice.
0:28:57 But like many business books, so you need to have a sort of grandiose term to strike the
0:29:06 mind of people and to build a school of idea when in reality, it’s a logical, interesting advice to
0:29:16 management in the same way as many other authors. We don’t need to have those big labels. And
0:29:21 certainly we don’t need entrepreneurs to think that they are going to be disruptive because first,
0:29:29 usually great things start small. You understand you’re talking to someone who’s
0:29:39 trying to make the word remarkable, just like the word disruption. The good thing is that
0:29:49 remarkable is more normal. To be remarkable, this is a word that you say in everyday life.
0:29:57 And so what you do is that you aggregate the various components of being remarkable.
0:30:03 But in everyday life, you say, oh, this is remarkable. This person is remarkable.
0:30:10 This book is remarkable. You show how the word remarkable has a wide range of meaning.
0:30:14 I must admit, I never use the word disruption. Never.
0:30:23 Okay, very good. So you make my point here. You don’t go around. You’re not going to buy
0:30:32 an ura ring because it disrupts Bulgaria. To your point, I don’t think people wake up in
0:30:40 the morning saying, God, I got to buy something disruptive. Exactly. In fact, you want to buy
0:30:46 something which is not disruptive, which is seductive. Yes. You want to be persuaded
0:30:55 to buy. You want to be brought into buying something. You want to charm, not to shock.
0:31:02 I knew it was inevitable to interview someone who’s French and we’d get to sex somehow.
0:31:14 And I would also make the case that you can only label things disruptive after the fact.
0:31:20 You can’t predict it. Exactly. This is an after the fact. I don’t see the point.
0:31:25 And if you say to a customer, it’s disruptive, they’re going to wait until other people adopt
0:31:30 the product because they don’t want to disrupt their business. So it’s a very negative view.
0:31:38 It has probably used it, but when I hear an interpreter tell me that it’s disruptive,
0:31:40 it’s usually that he doesn’t know the space very much.
0:31:48 You’re going to get my book and podcast banned inside of McKinsey, which if he keeps talking
0:31:57 about disruption being a bad word. It’s not a bad word. It’s a kind of filler word.
0:32:04 It’s just when people always use this kind of expression without knowing the origin
0:32:10 and the actual meaning, it becomes empty. I would say that it’s empty. People have to
0:32:16 say disruptive to look serious. That’s McKinsey. They don’t use it more than other people. I think
0:32:23 it’s just part of the lingo and one day when the people train in the 80s and 90s are going
0:32:29 to disappear, the world is going to disappear. Up next on Remarkable People. Most of the time
0:32:35 when we produce innovation, we think that what we do is so great that people will knock at our door
0:32:40 and buy it and drove. We forget that before we buy the next iPhone, we say, well, do I really
0:32:46 need one? And so we hesitate not because we are unable to make a decision without that’s cool,
0:32:53 but do I really need it? And so forth. We have to understand that people don’t operate at our speed.
0:33:03 Become a little more remarkable with each episode of Remarkable People.
0:33:07 It’s found on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
0:33:12 Welcome back to Remarkable People with Guy Kawasaki.
0:33:23 I would love to hear your opinion of how organizations can remain or sustain innovation
0:33:30 decades into. You point out that many companies are 50, 60, 70 years old and how do those companies
0:33:38 remain innovative? It’s very complicated, right? There is no one recipe, but usually
0:33:44 they hire people who can inform the upper management and they make sure that ideas are not
0:33:53 crushed or disappearing in the labyrinth of hierarchy. So that’s really the key. I think
0:34:00 that the minute you realize that innovation is about people and not about organization,
0:34:06 you start to take care of people. Organizations don’t crush innovation. People do crush innovation.
0:34:13 Power crushes innovation or fear crushes innovation, but sustaining innovation in
0:34:20 large corporation is possible. It’s completely possible. For example, think of Apple. We may
0:34:25 not always agree with what Apple has done over the years, but they have managed and this is an
0:34:34 old organization now. IBM, they are ups and downs, but they have managed it because they look for
0:34:42 talent. Look at Google. They have found talent everywhere and they acquire companies with a lot
0:34:48 of talent and they are able to maintain those talents, to keep those talents. The same with
0:34:54 Microsoft. This organization who are able to understand that innovation is linked to people
0:35:02 and crushed by people. Well, I mean, does it make sense? Not to get off on too much of a tangent,
0:35:09 but if people are the key like this, when societies or let’s say specific states, they seem to be
0:35:16 crushing people based on their race or their sexual orientation or something. It’s by these
0:35:22 superficial qualities of nothing to do with their ability to innovate. It seems to me that’s a
0:35:29 downward cycle there. This is definitely a downward cycle because if you look at Silicon
0:35:36 Valley, it’s white guys, but it’s a lot of Chinese and people from India. Let’s be realistic. We are
0:35:45 in a global world and talent can come from anywhere and from anybody, from any color, from any sexual
0:35:52 orientation. So all these qualifications, all these exclusionary processes are just absurd.
0:36:01 Basically, they are losing talent. Another thing that is going to maybe bad for the United States
0:36:09 and maybe other countries too, is the cost of universities because universities, laboratories
0:36:16 are the antechambers of innovation. So you have to train a large number of people
0:36:25 to basically emulate a lot of ideas, create a lot of ideas. So if you exclude people from
0:36:31 traditionally very effective university because of the cost, you may lose a lot of talent or they
0:36:37 may go back to their country. This is going to go off on another tangent, but I love to hear what
0:36:43 you say. Who do you consider more innovative? Steve Jobs or Elon Musk? I don’t tend to have
0:36:51 a hierarchy. I wouldn’t establish really a hierarchy between them. I only have preferences.
0:36:58 Okay. Who’s your preference? I prefer Steve Jobs. Why? Because I think he was
0:37:06 grateful to the environment he was in. And even though he was hard to deal with, I think that
0:37:12 his personality was more open to the world. Elon Musk is obviously an extraordinary man.
0:37:21 I’m disturbed by his radical positions and the risk of abuse of power. This is disturbing to me
0:37:27 because it’s more of a character issue, but it’s not because he’s an innovator. It’s more of a
0:37:34 character issue. I think Steve Jobs was provocative, could be probably very harsh with people,
0:37:45 but there was a personal integrity that is very meaningful. Okay. So I want to finish off with
0:37:52 your book specifically. Just give us the lessons of your book. In one question,
0:38:03 how do you get beyond Eureka? You work, you work, you work. You may succeed, you may restart,
0:38:11 you may pivot, but you move on continuously. That’s it? That’s the whole gist of it?
0:38:18 Yes. First off, I must tell people that you are the one who found this title beyond Eureka.
0:38:26 And very grateful about this. My point was that creators of companies who want to innovate have
0:38:33 to realize how difficult it is. And while I was trying to explain why it is difficult,
0:38:40 I want them to feel that they are not alone. Because most of the time, as an entrepreneur,
0:38:47 you feel lonely. You feel that if you don’t succeed, the world is going to look at you
0:38:57 in a decorative fashion. So what I did is make sure that I always illustrated that others went
0:39:06 through bad times, maybe some time even worse. I want to make sure that entrepreneurs understand
0:39:13 how hard it is to innovate. But I want also to make sure that they understand that they can
0:39:20 improvise, they can change that, they can be opportunistic, pragmatic, because others very
0:39:28 big names have done it before them. So I want to de-dramatize in many respects both success and
0:39:34 failure. I think that many people from the outside looking in think that the hard part
0:39:39 is coming up with the idea. And then once you come up with the idea, implementation is easy.
0:39:46 And my experience is it’s exactly the opposite. Exactly. I completely agree with that. Because
0:39:52 you get an idea when you work in a space, you see what the status of the space is,
0:39:57 and then you say, well, how come this works only like this? Let me try something else.
0:40:06 So you usually get ideas from a terrain where many ideas can germinate. So the ideas are pretty
0:40:13 easy to combine. And then when you have this idea, now how am I going to make it work? So you start
0:40:19 a company, so you learn how to manage a budget, how to raise money, how to hire people, what not.
0:40:24 And then the minute you have started a product, say, wow, who’s going to buy that stuff?
0:40:32 And this is the beginning of big headaches. So implementation, not of the rule of business,
0:40:38 but of the rule that will make people adopt your product is extraordinarily complicated
0:40:46 and challenging. Do you have any brilliant insights for us about adoption? Like, how do
0:40:51 you foster adoption? Because I think that’s what it all comes down to. I tell entrepreneurs all
0:41:00 the time, the only thing you need to remember is sales fixes everything. Yes. But you have sales
0:41:08 when you see how people can adopt. To have people adopt, you have to be progressively charming in
0:41:15 many respects. You have to first think how you, as a consumer, adopt product. Most of the time
0:41:22 when we produce innovation, we think that what we do is so great that people will knock at our door
0:41:29 and buy it and drove. We forget that before we buy the next iPhone, we say, well, do I really need
0:41:35 one? And so we hesitate, not because we are unable to make a decision without that school,
0:41:42 but do I really need it and so forth. We have to understand that people don’t operate at our
0:41:50 speed. That’s the first thing. Understand that customers are lazy. Even if they like the product,
0:41:57 logouts are not idiots. Simply, they don’t need the product or they are able to do without it.
0:42:04 Or they have different habits. To help adoption, you have to learn tolerance
0:42:11 of why people are not going to buy your product. You have to basically really do
0:42:18 a pre-water analysis. Find all the reasons why people are not going to buy you.
0:42:25 And then you have to also do everything possible to make sure that if they decide
0:42:34 to buy your product, the interface is going to be easy for them. And this is, by the way,
0:42:39 something I learned from you, my notion of interface. I had a tendency to look at the
0:42:44 technology. What I really learned from you when I came to this, to a valley, is the importance
0:42:52 of the interface, even the color of a package. And when I was working on the history of technology
0:42:59 for this book, I discovered that probably the genius of interface, the first big genius of
0:43:08 interface was George Isman at Kodak. Oh, yes, yes. And I think that everybody was working on better
0:43:16 ways to make photography happen, democratize photography. And all of a sudden, there was
0:43:24 somebody who said, you can click on the button, you being anybody. So I think he built the concept
0:43:30 of interface that pervaded everything since then. That reminds me of something that maybe in your
0:43:39 research, you have a better understanding of, which is in 1975, Steve Sassen of Kodak invented
0:43:46 digital photography and obviously did not embrace it. So what happened there? There was a very
0:43:51 interesting interview that he gave to the New York Times at the time.
0:44:01 It was killing the cash cow. And probably the upper management of Kodak had aged too much or the
0:44:08 board at age too much. So they could not project themselves 10 years, 20 years down the road.
0:44:17 They did not think of what their grandchildren would want to use. They had arrived. They were not
0:44:24 stupid people. They were simply stuck with themselves with their age. I think it was generational.
0:44:32 All right. So I have to tell you that I wrote a book called The Art of the Star 2.0, which goes
0:44:41 over the basic mechanisms of how to start a company. But I do not at all address with any kind of
0:44:48 quality that your book does. I think if you’re an entrepreneur listening to this or you’re thinking
0:44:54 of being an entrepreneur, you only need two books, The Art of the Star 2.0 and Beyond Eureka. Because
0:45:00 they’ll tell you how to set it up and how to get past the idea. And that’s what it takes to be a
0:45:07 successful entrepreneur. Thank you so much. And I love The Art of the Star 2.0, which has translated
0:45:15 into French, the two versions of them. So oh, and if nothing else now, I know with great confidence
0:45:22 that I can use the French name and the French concept of Noblesse Oblige and I can go in.
0:45:30 I have one more question about Noblesse Oblige. I have a negative reaction to the Noblesse
0:45:38 part of Noblesse Oblige because I do not like the concept of nobility in the sense that you’re
0:45:44 born into the royal family. And because you’re a noble and you realize because you’re such a
0:45:49 wonderful person, you have this obligation that you’re going to go help the peons. So I’m a noble
0:45:56 person who’s helping peons. Am I like reading too much into the concept of Noblesse Oblige that
0:46:05 it’s this like kind of elitist wonderfulness? It is elitist, it is elitist, but maybe not
0:46:14 elit by birth. The notion of Noblesse Oblige is respecting the sense of honor. It could be applied
0:46:24 to anybody in the scale of being nobles, even lowborn nobles. When you say be a gentleman
0:46:32 to somebody, you say Noblesse Oblige. It’s a code of honor. Okay. So it’s not nearly as negative
0:46:41 as I was thinking. It’s not at all negative. Oh, I gotta change my speech. I’m glad I asked.
0:46:51 It’s not negative at all. It’s behave honorably. Okay. There is the idea of privilege, but it really
0:46:59 emphasizes the responsibility of privilege. The same way, be a gentleman. You are a gentleman
0:47:06 except your responsibility and do the right thing. God, I got so much cleared up, I can go forth.
0:47:15 I’ll give you this opportunity. Just pitch your book, tell people why they should buy your book.
0:47:26 Read my book if you want to be encouraged all the way in the difficult path you have chosen,
0:47:33 because you are not alone. I hope you enjoyed this episode with Marlène Del Borg der Fies.
0:47:40 She was an enormous influence in my career, both as a tech executive as well as a writer.
0:47:45 If nothing else, I hope you understand the concept of Noblesse Oblige.
0:47:53 May we all fulfill our Noblesse Oblige. Let’s thank the crew. First, Madison Neismar. Madison
0:47:59 Neismar is the producer of this podcast and co-author with me of Think Remarkable. Then there’s the
0:48:06 amazing sound design engineers, Jeff C. and Shannon Hernandez, and the rest of the crew, Alexis Nishimura,
0:48:13 Fallen Yates, and Louise Magana. We are the Remarkable People team. We’re on a mission to
0:48:18 make you Remarkable. Now I’m going to give you a little bit of homework. Check out Marlène’s book.
0:48:25 It’s called Beyond Eureka. And while you’re doing that, check out our book, Think Remarkable.
0:48:33 We are truly on a mission to make you Remarkable. Until next time, Mahalo and Aloha.
0:48:39 This is Remarkable People.
In this episode of Remarkable People, join host Guy Kawasaki for an enlightening conversation with Marylène Delbourg-Delphis, a serial technology CEO, executive consultant, board member, and author. Marylène shares insights from her 30+ year career empowering organizations to reshape their future through breakthrough platforms and applications. She discusses the key themes from her new book “Beyond Eureka!: The Rocky Roads to Innovating”, providing an insider’s view on the often challenging path from idea to successful innovation. Discover Marylène’s perspective on the trailblazers vs. trail followers of tech history, sustaining innovation in large organizations, and fostering product adoption. Don’t miss this conversation full of wisdom gained from a remarkable entrepreneurial journey.
—
Guy Kawasaki is on a mission to make you remarkable. His Remarkable People podcast features interviews with remarkable people such as Jane Goodall, Marc Benioff, Woz, Kristi Yamaguchi, and Bob Cialdini. Every episode will make you more remarkable.
With his decades of experience in Silicon Valley as a Venture Capitalist and advisor to the top entrepreneurs in the world, Guy’s questions come from a place of curiosity and passion for technology, start-ups, entrepreneurship, and marketing. If you love society and culture, documentaries, and business podcasts, take a second to follow Remarkable People.
Listeners of the Remarkable People podcast will learn from some of the most successful people in the world with practical tips and inspiring stories that will help you be more remarkable.
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