Former Apple executive David Sobotta has an article in the Guardian (and reported on at Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed as well as Dealbreaker and others.)
Most of the blogs I visited today focused on the annecdotes about stage-managing Steve Jobs in front of important clients and the way he is reputed to straddle the line between Batshit Crazy and Sublime, but Arrogant, Brilliance.
Stories about him reprimanding customers are true. Once, when renegotiating a Pixar distribution deal with Disney, he humiliated Disney's chief information officer in front of his staff. Steve pointed to a couple of recent Disney flops, and told the attendees that they could expect more of the same as long as the CIO was stupid enough to keep Macs out of the creative process.
As entertaining as stories like that are, I was more absorbed by the way that Jobs' outlook, and by extension his senior executives' outlook defines their vision, and determines how they've focused Apple's strategy.
Some key excerpts:
But as Apple's then vice-president of hardware, Jon Rubenstein, once told me: "Customers do not know what they want to buy. We have to tell them."
...tablet computers were not a big enough market for Apple to spend its limited resources chasing. And even if the market grew, it would not reach a size to be of interest. The form factor was all wrong. Apple was more interested in defining markets than trying to catch other companies that were busy trying to create a market for questionable products.
Even before the iPod gained momentum, Apple executives had a theory that the route to success will not be through selling thousands of relatively expensive things, but millions of very inexpensive things like iPods
Traditionally, Apple stays away from markets where it cannot define all of the standards, so I really don't think Steve will devote resources to make non-Apple stuff work together.
As someone who has been rigorously trained in using processes, has conditioned myself to think in terms of process and outcome, and is a closet psychologist to boot, I find this insight into the mental workings of Apple's leadership to be enlightening.
Most enlightening, and somewhat shocking, is this bit:
Still, some of the NIH scientists pressed the issue [about tablet computers]. Steve's follow-up answer was the most impressive I had heard him give.
First, he said, the wireless bandwidth for huge images, plus the security needed to successfully do what NIH wanted, was just not on the horizon. (Apple staff had been notably fuzzy earlier in the briefing about wireless standards after 802.11b.) Plus, tablets' screen resolution was nowhere near that required for NIH's high-quality medical images. Finally, any product designed to work in the medical field would attract significant liability. The hint was that Apple wasn't interested in anything with that kind of potential liability. That pretty well shut down the issue.
From someone who is inarguably a visionary, that is an amazing amount of negativity presented in a single discussion. The whole "Nope. Can't do it. Here's why we can't do it." persona seems weird compared to the stereotypical image of entrepreneurs, inventors and visionaries of being achievers who never take no for an answer: if there is a problem, they labour away until they create a solution. I suppose even Winston Churchill had moments of doubt and defeatism.
Regardless, read the whole Guardian article, it's fascinating, and a little inspiring.
Friday, January 05, 2007
The next step towards the iWorld
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2 comments:
That negativity is even more notable in the technology area where the visionaries, et al. labour away creating solutions where no one else had even seen a problem.
Here's an interesting factoid dropped off my a reader via email:
"Winston Churchill was a notable "black dog" depressive. He certainly did have his moments of doubt and defeatism, but he was able to get past that when needed and be an enormously motivating force."
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