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How Steve Jobs Solved the Innovator's Dilemma
hype7 writes "With yesterday's release of the Steve Jobs biography, a raft of interesting information has come to light — including Jobs' favorite books. There's one book there listed as 'profoundly moving' to Jobs — The Innovator's Dilemma by innovation professor Clayton Christensen. The book explains how in the pursuit of profit, good managers leave their companies open to disruption. There's an interesting article over at the Harvard Business Review that explains how disruption works, and how Jobs managed to solve the dilemma by focusing Apple on products rather than profit."
not to mention, Jobs was only able to take total control because Apple was very close to death.
If Scully and the other bean counters didn't screw up as much as they did - and Apple was still a somewhat decent and profitable company - there's no way Job's would've been invited back, let alone go nuts the way he did.
I think all of us in the tech industry know of or have experienced decisions which make sense only when viewed from the light of "near term profit is the most important."
You know:
- Downsizing skilled engineering teams to cut costs in order to hit profit numbers
- Terminating new products before they've been completed, because some number cruncher couldn't foresee profitability
- Failure to endorse refactoring of software modules engineering states are fragile/non-maintainable because it requires dedication of resources to something that doesn't drive current revenues
- The list goes on
Here we have evidence, finally, that profit at all costs isn't how you run a company.
I think this speaks more to how pathetic the leadership of a lot of US companies have become more than it does on Jobs. Love Jobs or hate him, one thing that you cannot deny is that he was one of the few US CEOs that actually gave a shit about what his company makes and sells. Compare Jobs to people like Fiorna or Bob Nardelli whose sole purpose was to get inside a company, didn't' even matter which industry it was, and play games with numbers while gutting the company and enriching themselves in the process. Fiorna didn't give 2 shits about servers, or calculators, or Unix etc. To her they were all just "product", an annoyance that she had to tolerate on her way to stealing from the HP shareholders, employees, and customers.
Now compare that to Jobs, people talk about the reality distortion field, but the only way Jobs could actually create that field was if he actually cared about what he was talking about. He gave such good presentations because in a lot of ways he was like a kid who had just been given a neat toy and was showing it off at show and tell, there was genuine passion there. If companies want to emulate Apple's success the first thing they have to do is hire executives that actually are genuinely interested in what they make and sell.
Monstar L
It drove more than their share price.
If you're arguing that he made bad business decisions, I think you need to rework your argument.
It's the most misunderstood thing in business - do good work, make the customers happy, create good value and profit becomes a side effect.
Most of the stuff on
Uh, no, RMFP, it's actually the "you're part of the problem you're whining about" argument. Slashdot attracts readers to the comments section where they serve ads. If you post about how you hate Apple, you're making money for Slashdot and encouraging them to keep running Apple stories.
But, hey, according to somebody with a mod-point, I shouldn't be pointing this out. Well, if I'm some crazy person, fine. You're welcome to go to apple.slashdot.org and peek at all the recent stories and how many comments they've gotten. After three or for stores with 500+ comments it really is hard to say that people who post on Slashdot don't want Apple stories posted.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Sculley traded Apple's good reputation for short term profits.
I wouldn't exactly call that saving Apple, it's typical MBA idiocy.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
Steve Jobs was a bit of an unusual case, because the man had a brand unlike almost any other corporate executive in the United States. Think about how he took most of Apple's engineering staff off of MacBook upgrades and OS X development to create the iPhone. It worked, and created Apple its most profitable product line ever. But what other person, at what other large company, has the political capital to sacrifice development of an existing profitable product line for an unknown?
Jobs did that back when Apple had less resources too. He pretty much completely killed the Apple II team to make the Macintosh team. He just got his best people, and put them to work on what he thought was the future product. Take this story for example. Eventually, the people who remained on the Apple II team were only the engineers he didn't have much confidence on (and by "eventually" I mean before the Macintosh got released, not after the user base for the Mac surpassed the Apple II). Relevant quote:
"No, you're just wasting your time with that! Who cares about the Apple II? The Apple II will be dead in a few years. Your OS will be obsolete before it's finished. The Macintosh is the future of Apple, and you're going to start on it now!".
With that, he walked over to my desk, found the power cord to my Apple II, and gave it a sharp tug, pulling it out of the socket, causing my machine to lose power and the code I was working on to vanish. He unplugged my monitor and put it on top of the computer, and then picked both of them up and started walking away. "Come with me. I'm going to take you to your new desk."
Jobs was an asshole in a lot of ways, but it's undeniable that his driven attitude was responsible for his successes. He didn't play it safe, he put his faith in the next product and went ahead full steam. If it doesn't work out, drop the project without a second thought and move on.
I like how he still thought he was an innovator, when he admitted in his own book that another guy came up with the idea for products like the iPhone. That same guy received an award for it. That guy still works for Apple.
Steve Jobs was just the business man who could sell it. This has not only been blatantly obvious from the beginning, but now his own words back it up. So why are we still describing him as an innovator and visionary?
I can however credit him for being a good business man. And that's how he should be remembered. You know, the honest way.