There’s no evidence that the world really needs a new Steve Jobs, but Jack Dorsey often gets described as the best person for the role. He invented and today leads product development at Twitter, and is founder and CEO of fast-growing payments company Square. Whether you think he’s a match for Jobs or not, Dorsey certainly has a distinctive style in talking about and creating technology. Here’s a summary of his approach in his own words, from an onstage interview with Jason Pontin, our editor-in-chief at an MIT Technology Review event in San Francisco last week:
- Good technology becomes invisible.
“I think about new technologies in terms of utilities. The electric outlets in every room are something we don’t realize until it’s pointed out or [the power] goes down. I can plug in an electric guitar, vacuum, I can make my own product. The really great designs fade away in that sense.”
- It has to be big, and small.
“Twitter was designed to be used by a 5 dollar cell phone in the middle of Kenya, all the way up to the largest organizations in the world such as governments. A 5 dollar phone in Kenya has the exact same tool that Lady Gaga does. We want to build at scale, but with a very large dynamic range. Square gives a sole trader a better tool in many ways than a multibillion dollar retailer. Starbucks [which recently signed up to use Square in its coffee shops] has validated that the other end of that scale is also true.”
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