Jobs Creation

[tceisele]

So yesterday, I was listening to the radio while NPR had a long eulogy about the huge impact of Steve Jobs, including a bit about Apple's kind of secretive efforts to "institutionalize his management style" (which almost sounded like they are trying to simulate him in software

Comments

[johnridley]

One thing that occurred to me while listening to someone talk about Steve Jobs this morning is that Jobs' management style is probably the exact opposite of what's considered the "formula for success" - he led the company with passion and spirit and they made the desire for excellent product come first and charged whatever it cost, including the cost of ongoing R&D for future products (and allowed latitude in R&D). As a result, Apple is the most successful company in the world right now, with more cash reserves than the US Treasury.

The "formula" way is to provide what everyone else is providing, funding R&D only insomuch as they are working on immediate deliverables, with incremental improvements designed not to innovate but to simply have a few more bullet points than the other guy, and design to a price point. The result of this is usually mediocrity. Occasionally some startup will break into the market successfully and introduce innovation, but they're soon enough bought up by monstrous corporations and stomped into flat corporate molds.

I'm not a big Apple fan, but it's not because I don't respect their company or their products. Both are excellent and admirable. I just don't personally need any of them.