The iPhone has provided access to the entire world’s knowledge at our fingertips, given society an incredible amount of freedom and an unparalleled level of convenience. Not only has it given us this access, but this powerful technological innovation is beautifully designed, powerful and intuitive.

iPhone为我们社会提供了无与伦比的自由度和无与伦比的便捷性，使我们触手可及的地方可以访问全世界的知识。 它不仅为我们提供了这种访问权限，而且这种强大的技术创新还经过精心设计，强大而直观。

However, while the iPhone has permanently transformed society, it started off with humble beginnings. It might seem like an insurmountable task to replicate an innovation with the same level of impact, value, and scale as the iPhone again. I argue, however, that it is more accessible than we might initially think: we are just not looking at innovation the right way.

然而，尽管iPhone永久改变了社会，但它的开端却很不起眼。 再次复制具有与iPhone相同水平的影响力，价值和规模的创新，似乎是一项艰巨的任务。 但是，我认为，它比我们最初想象的更容易获得：我们只是没有以正确的方式看待创新。

As a society, we have come to view successful innovation as consisting of monumental changes, big risks, and charismatic entrepreneurs putting it all on the line to make their vision come to life. This may have some truth to it, but is this truly how innovation works?

作为一个社会，我们已经将成功的创新视为巨大的变革，巨大的风险和有超凡魅力的企业家所组成，将其全部置于一线以使他们的愿景变为现实。 这可能有些道理，但这真的是创新的工作方式吗？

Let us find out together.

让我们一起找出答案。

什么是创新？ (What is Innovation?)

The most widely accepted definition of innovation comes from the late innovation guru Clayton Christensen. He describes innovation as falling into one of two buckets — sustaining or disruptive innovation.

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最广泛接受的创新定义来自已故的创新大师Clayton Christensen。 他将创新描述为两个类别之一：持续创新或破坏性创新。

Safi Bahcall in his book Loonshoots, argues that innovation is more sequential than it is categorical. He argues that many innovations do not start off with the intention of being disruptive. They start small and serendipitously but slowly scale to be iteratively disruptive over time.

萨菲•巴赫卡尔(Safi Bahcall)在他的“ 懒人 ”(Loonshoots)一书中指出， 创新比绝对分类更具有序贯性 。 他认为，许多创新并非以破坏性的目的开始。 它们从小巧而偶然地开始，但随着时间的流逝逐渐扩展为迭代破坏性的。

“We tend to underestimate the impact of innovation in the long run but overestimate its impact in the short run” — Roy Amara

“我们往往低估了创新的长期影响，但高估了短期的影响” – Roy Amara

For instance, the iPhone and iPod are retrospectively regarded as disruptive innovations in their respective fields, but they did not start that way. The iPod was mainly marketed by Apple as an efficient way of holding ‘1,000 songs in your pocket’. The iPhone further built on this and Steve Jobs mainly created it as an efficient way of ‘making calls and listening to music’ on one device.

例如，iPhone和iPod被追溯地视为各自领域中的颠覆性创新，但它们并非以这种方式开始。 iPod主要由Apple销售，是一种有效的“口袋里保存1,000首歌曲”的方式。 iPhone进一步以此为基础，而史蒂夫·乔布斯(Steve Jobs)主要将其创建为一种在一部设备上“拨打电话和听音乐”的有效方式。

As you can see, these were hardly disruptive goals at the time, so where did this grand narrative of innovation come from?

如您所见，这些在当时几乎不是破坏性的目标，那么这种宏伟的创新叙述从何而来？