2. Does Cook's view of " accountability" seem extreme? Is there a downside to such aggressive accountability? After deciding to hold himself accountable for designing new products, Scott Cook created some unique methods to ensure he'd meet those design obligations when he founded a company back in 1983. Cook Is the former CEO of Intuit, the $3.1 billion company whose well-known software tools- Quicken and Quickbooks-have changed the way we manage our financial lives.

Cook initially envisioned three core principles for product design that eventually led to superb commercial success:

• First: It's the customer that's most important.

Listen to the customer and design the product for customer value.

• Second: Be open-minded in identifying all competing ways the customer could perform the task, not just the obvious ways.

• Third: Simplify and improve the product so it provides the easiest way for the customer to complete the task to be performed.

From the beginning, Cook believed these principles would lead to superior, user-friendly preferred products that customers would buy and use.

Accordingly, customer acceptance of the products would be the ultimate measure of success or failure of product designs for which Cook was accountable.