Start here.
Don't forget to watch Pirates of Silicon Valley.
And the Stanford speech (link for text of the speech). You can see it here if you haven't.
Walter Isaacson (the guy who wrote the book) spoke at University of South Carolina in December. There's a link to a video of his presentation here. Fascinating.
He was a remarkable guy, and a jerk by the account of many. But sometimes it takes a jerk I guess.
Finally, here's a Forbes link that discusses Peggy Noonan's comparison of Jobs to Obama, but also talks about the life cycle of big companies. Really interesting.
Showing posts with label Steve Jobs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Steve Jobs. Show all posts
Monday, January 30, 2012
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Why big companies dive or thrive: Peggy Noonon on SJobs
I find the first few words of this article by Peggy Noonan very interesting.
There is an arresting moment in Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs in which Jobs speaks at length about his philosophy of business. He's at the end of his life and is summing things up. His mission, he says, was plain: to "build an enduring company where people were motivated to make great products." Then he turned to the rise and fall of various businesses. He has a theory about "why decline happens" at great companies: "The company does a great job, innovates and becomes a monopoly or close to it in some field, and then the quality of the product becomes less important. The company starts valuing the great salesman, because they're the ones who can move the needle on revenues." So salesmen are put in charge, and product engineers and designers feel demoted: Their efforts are no longer at the white-hot center of the company's daily life. They "turn off." IBM and Xerox, Jobs said, faltered in precisely this way. The salesmen who led the companies were smart and eloquent, but "they didn't know anything about the product." In the end this can doom a great company, because what consumers want is good products.
There is an arresting moment in Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs in which Jobs speaks at length about his philosophy of business. He's at the end of his life and is summing things up. His mission, he says, was plain: to "build an enduring company where people were motivated to make great products." Then he turned to the rise and fall of various businesses. He has a theory about "why decline happens" at great companies: "The company does a great job, innovates and becomes a monopoly or close to it in some field, and then the quality of the product becomes less important. The company starts valuing the great salesman, because they're the ones who can move the needle on revenues." So salesmen are put in charge, and product engineers and designers feel demoted: Their efforts are no longer at the white-hot center of the company's daily life. They "turn off." IBM and Xerox, Jobs said, faltered in precisely this way. The salesmen who led the companies were smart and eloquent, but "they didn't know anything about the product." In the end this can doom a great company, because what consumers want is good products.
Jobs's theory of decline was elegant and simple as an iPad, and when I asked business leaders about it the past few weeks, they agreed, some with the kind of engagement that suggested maybe their own companies had experienced such troubles.
Noonan, Peggy. WSJ. 11/18/11. A Caveman Won't Beat a Salesman.
Man, ain't THIS the truth! We see this all the time! The belief that a better salesman can fix things is always flawed.
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