Presentation-Secrets-Of-Steve-Jobs
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INTRODUCE THE ANTAGONIST 69<br />
man saw a saber-toothed tiger, he asked himself, “Will it eat<br />
me?” and not “How many teeth does it have?”<br />
The antagonist gives your audience the big picture. “Don’t<br />
start with the details. Start with the key ideas and, in a hierarchical<br />
fashion, form the details around these larger notions,”<br />
writes Medina in his book Brain Rules. 7 In presentations, start<br />
with the big picture—the problem—before filling in the details<br />
(your solution).<br />
Apple unveiled the Safari Web browser during Macworld<br />
2003, designating it the fastest browser on the Mac. Safari<br />
would join several other browsers vying for attention in the face<br />
of Microsoft’s juggernaut—Internet Explorer. At his persuasive<br />
best, <strong>Jobs</strong> set up the problem—introducing the antagonist—<br />
simply by asking a rhetorical question: “Why do we need our<br />
own browser?” 8 Before demonstrating the new features—filling<br />
in the details—he needed to establish a reason for the product’s<br />
existence.<br />
<strong>Jobs</strong> told the audience that there were two areas in which<br />
competitors such as Internet Explorer, Netscape, and others fell<br />
short: speed and innovation. In terms of speed, <strong>Jobs</strong> said Safari<br />
would load pages three times faster than Internet Explorer on<br />
the Mac. In the area of innovation, <strong>Jobs</strong> discussed the limitations<br />
of current browsers, including the fact that Google search<br />
was not provided in the main toolbar and that organizing bookmarks<br />
left a lot to be desired. “What we found in our research is<br />
that people don’t use bookmarks. They don’t use favorites very<br />
much because this stuff is complicated and nobody has figured<br />
out how to use it,” <strong>Jobs</strong> said. Safari would fix the problems by<br />
incorporating Google search into the main toolbar and adding<br />
features that would allow users to more easily navigate back to<br />
previous sites or favorite Web pages.<br />
One simple sentence is all you need to introduce the antagonist:<br />
“Why do you need this?” This one question allows <strong>Jobs</strong> to<br />
review the current state of the industry (whether it be browsers,<br />
operating systems, digital music, or any other facet) and to<br />
set the stage for the next step in his presentation, offering the<br />
solution.