I recently had the opportunity to visit the Bloomberg Tower, the corporate headquarters for the Bloomberg financial media empire. It was an impressive place, to say the least. When you enter, the main area for greeting visitors kind of looks like the world’s nicest airport waiting lounge, if we actually lived in a world where airports were fundamentally designed to be places of comfort and elegance. As soon as you enter, you are greeted by a huge open-air pantry where visitors and employees alike are encouraged to take whatever they want to eat or drink. Anthropologists say that we take each other out on dates because a fundamental aspect of building relationships is through the sharing of food. Bloomberg understands this.
As I went through the building, I got to see a pretty cool exhibit that displayed every generation of the famous Bloomberg terminals on which Michael Bloomberg built his empire. I remember when I first worked with one of these terminals in the early 1990s, before the advent of the World Wide Web, when the idea of a detailed and proprietary network—backed up by a unique piece of hardware through which to access that network—seemed like a good idea. In the years that followed, the notion of Bloomberg machines seemed increasingly silly until you realized that the interface is part of the value. It delivers information distraction-free, in a relentless drive toward results. The legion of Bloomberg apps that have driven this interface forward in a number of ways shows that Bloomberg’s proprietary approach stayed relevant through constant tinkering and improvement—a valuable lesson for anybody to learn.
