power of imputing

Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs is one of my favorite reads which details out a very poetic life story of a rebel who unapologetically challenged the status quo and undertook unprecedented steps that help drive the success of Apple. One of the three guiding principles that Mike Markkula (first investor in Apple) shared with Steve Jobs was ‘impute’. He told him to place a strong emphasis on presenting something really well. Contrary to popular wisdom to not judge a book by its cover, people are unfortunately hardwired to judge a book by its cover. As we can see today, the concept of ‘imputing’ has been deeply ingrained in Apple’s DNA across the whole value chain. It was something that Steve Jobs was passionately obsessed about. Steve Jobs strongly believed that design represented the true soul of a product and captured certain elements which existed outside the realm of pure engineering. This philosophy of design was deeply incorporated into seemingly trivial aspects of product development or sales like neat placement of hardware inside the product (even though the consumer would mostly never see the inside of a product), the beautiful packaging of finished products (even though the packaging boxes would mostly thrown out after opening it) and selling products in own offline channels through expensive well-designed retail stores (even though cost could be reduced by selling through third-party retailers). At the time of early implementation, all these seemed like unnecessary steps that would hurt the profit margins as they did not serve a very tangible purpose. But as history is witness, that isn’t what happened. The seemingly unnecessary steps elevated the user experience and created additional aspirational value for the product that was impossible to capture through superior engineering alone. A deeper connection was formed with the emotional side of the brain which responds well to well-crafted design, and consequently incited a cult like loyalty to the brand.