A blogger from VentureBeat asked us yesterday: "Why did Steve Jobs mean so much to the ZURB team?" I paused as I heard the question. It's not the easiest question to give a one line answer to.
The truth is that his work and philosophies have been a tremendous inspiration for everyone here at ZURB. He has inspired us to do what we do every day: help people build better products. You must have read some of our detailed blog posts where we outline the things we admire about the man. The best example that illustrates ZURB's personal connection with the man, however, is our daily ritual of the morning scrum with the Steve Jobs doll.
Every day at 9am our entire team gathers around the kitchen table to communicate to the team what each one of us is working on for the day. Until he retired earlier this year, we passed Steve around as the indicator of whose turn it was to talk. We call this our morning scrum. The scrum keeps everyone on the team up to date, focused and on the same page about everyone's efforts. As we passed Steve around it was almost impossible not to think about how he would have done what you were going to do that day.
As you look at this doll it's impossible to forget his famous quote from the 2005 commencement ceremony at Stanford:
If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?' And whenever the answer has been 'No' for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Steve has helped shape ZURB into what it is today. He inspires each and everyone of us here at ZURB (designers, engineers, instigators, customer advocates, marketers) to go out there and help people build amazing products for others.