In the early 1990s, a company called General Magic was building the future. Their handheld device had email, wireless connectivity, and an intuitive touch interface—features that wouldn't become mainstream until the iPhone arrived fifteen years later. They had visionary ideas, brilliant engineers, and backing from tech giants. Yet they failed spectacularly, while Apple later succeeded with what seemed like the same concept.
The difference wasn't technology or timing. It was something more fundamental: Apple understood their idea in a way General Magic never did.
There's a crucial distinction between having an idea and truly understanding it. What I call "core ideas"—the foundational principles from which entire systems grow—require something most people skip: they need to be massaged.
This isn't about selection or optimization. Many people think finding a core idea means generating ten possibilities and picking the best one. But a great core idea emerges through an iterative process of working with it, testing its boundaries, discovering its implications. Like a massage that needs time to work through tension, an idea needs sustained attention to reveal what it actually contains.
Nintendo is one of the few companies that consciously applies this methodology, and their process offers a masterclass in how it works. When Nintendo begins developing a new Super Mario game, they don't start with levels, storylines, or even art assets. Instead, they create an empty world with a single figure in it—Mario himself. Then they spend the majority of their development time obsessing over one thing: making his movements and interactions not just smooth and easy, but fundamentally fun.
This isn't mere polish. The team will iterate endlessly on the weight of Mario's jump, the responsiveness of his controls, the satisfying arc of his movement through space. They're not solving technical problems—they're massaging a core idea about what interactive joy feels like. If running and jumping doesn't feel delightful in a Mario game, nothing else matters. Every other element of the game will grow from this foundation.
What makes this approach so powerful is that the real innovation happens during this massage phase. As they refine the core experience, unexpected problems emerge that demand creative solutions. New possibilities open up that they couldn't have planned for. The way Mario moves might suggest new power-ups, level designs, or gameplay mechanics that flow naturally from the core principle rather than being bolted on afterwards.
Mario in Magic Cap.
The massage metaphor reveals why this process is so often misunderstood. A two-minute massage leaves you unsatisfied because the real work hasn't begun. Similarly, ideas need sustained engagement to reveal their true nature. During this process, you're not just polishing—you're learning the idea's limitations, possibilities, and internal logic.
True core ideas have a particular quality that distinguishes them from mere features or components: they're troublemakers. They're open-ended rather than solvable, generative rather than conclusive. To understand this distinction, consider two different approaches to Mario's design:
"Make jumping work in Mario" is a problem you can solve and close. You program the physics, test the collision detection, and move on to the next task. But "make interaction delightful" is an endless question that generates new problems and possibilities with every answer you attempt. How delightful is delightful enough? What makes one type of movement more satisfying than another? How do you create anticipation in the moment before Mario lands?
This generative quality is what makes core ideas powerful—they don't conclude, they create. Each solution opens new questions. Each refinement reveals new possibilities. The more deeply Nintendo understands what makes movement joyful, the more opportunities they discover for expressing that joy through level design, character abilities, and player challenges.
The Nintendo approach also reveals another crucial insight: identifying a true core idea versus just an important element. "Mario should jump on platforms" describes what the game contains, but "interaction should delight" describes what the game accomplishes. The first is a feature that can be implemented; the second is a principle that must be embodied.
This distinction explains why so many games that copy Mario's mechanics fail to capture its magic. They reproduce the jumping and the platforms but miss the deeper principle that makes those mechanics meaningful. They're building from the outside in, adding features to achieve an effect, rather than working from the inside out, letting the core principle determine what features are needed.
This same pattern appears across successful products and companies. Amazon's core idea isn't "sell things online" but something closer to "eliminate friction between wanting and having." Everything from their recommendation algorithms to their logistics infrastructure serves this deeper principle. Google's core isn't "build a search engine" but "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible"—a principle that naturally expanded from web search to email, maps, mobile operating systems, and cloud computing.
This insight transforms how we think about innovation timing and the nature of breakthrough success. General Magic's failure wasn't about being too early for the technology or market—it was about trying to build before truly understanding what they were building. They had collected a impressive array of features that would later prove valuable, but they hadn't identified and massaged the core principle that would make those features coherent and compelling.
The iPhone's eventual success demonstrates what the massage process looks like over an extended timeline. Apple didn't suddenly decide to build a revolutionary phone in 2007. They spent years massaging related concepts, each iteration deepening their understanding of what "seamless personal computing" actually meant in practice. The original Mac taught them about intuitive interfaces. The iPod taught them about elegant hardware design and the importance of the initial user experience. iTunes taught them about digital ecosystems and user data.
Each product wasn't just a commercial success—it was a learning experience that refined their core understanding. By the time they approached the iPhone, they had developed an intimate relationship with the principles that would make it work. They understood that the core idea wasn't about cramming computer functionality into a phone, but about creating technology that felt like a natural extension of human intention.
This reframes what we might call the "General Magic problem"—the tendency to try to build comprehensive solutions before understanding the core principle they should serve. General Magic tried to create the entire future of computing at once, loading their device with every feature they could imagine: email, faxing, wireless connectivity, third-party applications, and more. But without a clear core idea to guide these choices, the result felt more like a technology demonstration than a useful product.
The contrast with Nintendo's approach is instructive. Nintendo will often spend years on what seems like a simple concept. The original Super Mario Bros. remains as engaging today as modern installments not because of technical sophistication, but because Nintendo spent enormous effort understanding and perfecting the core experience of joyful movement. That understanding, once achieved, transcends technological limitations and provides a foundation that can support endless innovation.
For contemporary entrepreneurs and thinkers, this suggests a radically different approach to development timelines and resource allocation. Instead of rushing to build comprehensive solutions, the focus should be on identifying and deeply understanding the core principle. What seems like slower progress—massaging a single idea rather than implementing multiple features—often leads to more profound and lasting success.
This also explains why breakthrough products often feel "obvious" in retrospect. The iPhone wasn't revolutionary because of any single feature, but because every element served a thoroughly understood core principle. The obviousness isn't simplicity—it's the natural expression of an idea that has been worked with long enough to strip away everything extraneous. When you truly understand your core idea, the right choices become clear, and the wrong ones become obviously wrong.
Consider how this might apply to current technological frontiers. Many companies are racing to build AI products, adding machine learning capabilities to existing software like General Magic added connectivity to handheld devices. But the companies that will likely succeed long-term are those taking time to understand what AI can uniquely accomplish—not just what it can technically do, but what core human need or desire it can serve in a way that feels natural and inevitable.
But this raises a crucial question for anyone working with ideas: How do you know when you've massaged an idea enough versus when you're still in the early stages of understanding what you're really dealing with?
The answer may lie in recognizing when your relationship with the idea shifts from trying to control it to learning from it. When you start discovering implications you didn't anticipate, when new problems and possibilities emerge naturally from your core principle, you may be approaching that deeper understanding that makes breakthrough work possible.
Perhaps the next exploration should examine the specific practices and mental frameworks that facilitate this deeper engagement with ideas—the techniques that separate true massage from mere repetition.
For a deeper dive into the General Magic story and its lessons for product development, I highly recommend Tony Fadell's "Build," which provides an insider's perspective on both the failures and eventual successes that shaped modern consumer technology.