Unexpected success

George Lucas is know for the "Star Wars" movies, some of the most successful movies of all time.

Yet I suspect it started differently.

In 1977, Lucas had the movies "THX-1138" and "American Graffiti" behind him. "THX-1138" is an obscure movie, now most famous for being one of Lucas' creations. It is a decent movie, and respected by science fiction fans, but not known outside of fandom. "American Graffiti" was a successful movie: popular in its day but now more of a fond memory. (When was the last time you watched it?) There is nothing in either movie that says "genius movie maker".

I suspect that George Lucas made "Star Wars" and was hoping for a reasonable amount of success, and that he was not expecting the movie to become the foundation of a franchise and marketing empire.

I believe that Apple, with the first iPhone, was, like George Lucas, hoping for a reasonable amount of success. I also believe that the tremendous response far surpassed Apple's expectations. (I suspect it also surpassed AT&T's expectations, which conveniently explains the difficulties encountered by so many new iPhone customers when they activated their accounts.)

Their successes were due, in part, to the gambles that each made. Lucas used computers to control the models of X-wing fighters, selected classical music, and released in the summer. Apple created an elegant design quite different from contemporary cell phones, leveraged its "easy to install" ideas for apps from Mac OSX, and built an interface that was different from the traditional Windows (and even Mac) OS.

Lucas' work stamped itself onto our culture, with "The Force" and even the quote "I've got a bad feeling about this".

Apple's work changed the course of the industry, such that Microsoft Windows and the "windows, icons, mouse, and pointer" theme is no longer the design leader. Microsoft's introduction of Windows RT and the "Modern" UI shows the effect of the iPhone success.

All of which perhaps is evidence that success is something that cannot be planned, timed, or scheduled, and that success can come from taking risks and ignoring established ideas.