[MUSIC PLAYING]
If you think about it, even when a product is actually complete,
today as consumers we're expecting that it's never quite the finished product.
Take your smartphone, for example.
You assume that this is the finished product.
But it's actually not.
We all know that after we buy our phone, we
assume that we'll get an update of the software
within maybe a couple of months, and then within a year,
probably, there will be a new and improved version of it.
The company that's creating it has learned through customer feedback
and customer interactions what features it should eliminate,
what features it should add.
So we're in an era where we look at the products around us,
and we assume that they are in permanent beta.
There's a common saying among producers and filmmakers that a mix or an edit
is never completed.
It's simply abandoned.
I can't stand comparing myself to the work that I did last week or last year.
Change is the only constant in life.
To stagnate would be to kill your good, your product, or your service.
Iteration is how we got to most of the successful records
that we were doing at Bad Boy Records, and some of the work
that I did with Diddy.
We'd come in, we'd make a record, there would be a chorus,
and it would be like 100% complete, and then
the question would be-- can it become better?
And we'd spend some time trying to make it 110% complete,
and we almost always bumped into something that was better.
And then the question would come again-- can we make it even better?
And then we push, and now the genius of multiple iterations
is knowing when you've stepped past the creative point
and into this area of diminishing returns,
and then to back up to one of the better iterations and say, you know what?
It can always be better, but this is a good representation
of where we are right now, and let's communicate this to the audience.
If you listen to, say, Bruce Springsteen's first version
of "Born in the USA" and the way that he performs it today,
it sounds dramatically different.
Why?
Well, it went through this process of constant iteration and co-creation
with the consumer, with the customer, and through endless times of performing
the song live, it's changed and evolved based
on that interaction and the feedback.
We all understand as creative beings that only once we release something
out there and we start the conversation that we're
having with our audience do we perfect it and make it better, and better,
and better.
You're putting out your best product all the time.
It's just that once it's out there, right?
Once you've birthed this product, you want to do it different
the next time, right?
Because you understand you could have done this better,
or you might consider this, or the consumer has moved,
or something has happened in the world to affect it.
So I think it's just kind of getting into that metabolism of not
being afraid to put it out there.
You bring a product to market, and you know for a fact there's
15 things you want to change.
But at the end of the day, it's a business at the same time, right?
Clients have to bring these products to market.
We need to bring products to market.
We could keep iterating to version 1,000, 10,000, 100,000,
but the problem is, at the end of the day, it's got to stop at some point
so then the consumers can have that product in their lives.
The one thing that I encourage people to put into their head
is every time someone shows me something, right?
A product that they've been iterating and innovating-- I'll
always say to them, no matter if it's version one,
or it's version 100, or version 150.
Tell me five things that are wrong with it,
and five things you want to change about it?
And the day you change your mindset from what's good about this,
to what's bad about this, right?
You learn that you can improve upon the negatives,
but you can't fix the positives, right?
The positives will always be there.
It sounds extremely pessimistic, but that's the way we go through life.
And it's the most tormenting role in the world to be a product developer here,
because you know for a fact it's the constant search
for the unattainable perfection.
Right?
It's a notion we live by around here, and it keeps us hungry
and it keeps us pushing.
I was the agent for jazz great Sonny Rollins,
and Sonny would tell me that every time he would perform a song,
he would deliberately go through this process of unlearning the solo
that he played last time, because he wanted to never ever repeat
himself and always be fresh.
So apply this mindset onto whatever you're doing.
Approach every version of whatever you're releasing out there
as if it's the first time you're doing it.
You live your life and you run your company
as if it's always in a phase of prototyping,
as if it's always in permanent beta.